Online research in philosophy

Arguments from the Logical Problem of Language Acquisition suggest that since linguistic experience provides few negative data that would falsify overgeneral grammatical hypotheses, innate knowledge of the principles of Universal Grammar must constrain learners hypothesis formulation. Although this argument indicates a need for domain-specific constraints, it does not support their innateness. Learning from mostly positive data proceeds unproblematically in virtually all domains. Since not every domain can plausibly be accorded its own special faculty, the probative value of the argument (...) in the linguistic case is dubious. In ignoring the holistic and probablistic nature of theory construction, the argument underestimates the extent to which positive data can supply negative evidence and hence overestimates the intractability of language learning in the absence of a dedicated faculty. While nativism about language remains compelling, the alleged Logical Problem contributes nothing to its plausibility and the emphasis on the Problem in the recent acquisition literature has been a mistake. (shrink)

Deliberate contextual vocabulary acquisition (CVA) is a reader’s ability to figure out a (not the) meaning for an unknown word from its “context”, without external sources of help such as dictionaries or people. The appropriate context for such CVA is the “belief-revised integration” of the reader’s prior knowledge with the reader’s “internalization” of the text. We discuss unwarranted assumptions behind some classic objections to CVA, and present and defend a computational theory of CVA that we have adapted to a (...) new classroom curriculum designed to help students use CVA to improve their reading comprehension. (shrink)

The acquisition of concepts has proven especially difficult for philosophers and psychologists to explain. In this paper, I examine Jerry Fodor’s most recent attempt to explain the acquisition of concepts relative to experiences of their referents. In reevaluating his earlier position, Fodor attempts to co-opt informational semantics into an account of concept acquisition that avoids the radical nativism of his earlier views. I argue that Fodor’s attempts ultimately fail to be persuasive. He must either accept his earlier (...) nativism or adopt a rational causal model of concept acquisition. His animus towards the latter dictates, in my view, a return to the nativism with which he began. (shrink)

There is a great deal that might be said about justice in property claims. The strategy that I shall employ focuses attention upon the initial acquisition of property -- the most sensitive and most interesting area of property theory. Every theory that discusses property claims favorably assumes that there is some justification for transforming previously unowned resources into property. It is often this assumption which has seemed, to one extent or another, to be vulnerable to attack by critics of (...) particular justifications of property. Nevertheless, this assumption is frequently left undefended by property theorists, and where it is defended, the defense is often remarkably weak. That some initial claim to property be defensible is required by any theory which holds that certain present distributions may be justified, that certain transfers of property are justified, or that restitution ought to be made for previous injustice in transfer or acquisition. The initial acquisition of property, and its justification, is crucial to the remainder of property theory. (shrink)

The paper discusses how abduction relates tochildren's early acquisition of words, and has three sections: (a) a brief description of Peirce's notion of abduction; (b) a developmentof a hypothesis for the content-related symbolic functioning of words; and (c)arguments that children's knowledge of such functioning involves two kinds of abduction. In (b), children's knowledge of the content-related symbolic functioning of words is argued to consist in practical knowledge ofhow to use words to direct attention to kindsof things. To acquire such (...) knowledge, a childmust form a practical causal hypothesis aboutthe kind of thing to which a word directs attention. I argue that forming such ahypothesis involves abduction. On the basis of empirical work of several developmentalists, I also argue that children use abduction notmerely in forming practical hypotheses for the functioning of their earliest words, but also in forming theoretical hypotheses about core(as contrasted perceptual and functional)features of natural and artificial kinds. (shrink)

Learning theory has frequently been applied to language acquisition, but discussion has largely focused on information theoretic problems—in particular on the absence of direct negative evidence. Such arguments typically neglect the probabilistic nature of cognition and learning in general. We argue first that these arguments, and analyses based on them, suffer from a major flaw: they systematically conflate the hypothesis class and the learnable concept class. As a result, they do not allow one to draw significant conclusions about the (...) learner. Second, we claim that the real problem for language learning is the computational complexity of constructing a hypothesis from input data. Studying this problem allows for a more direct approach to the object of study—the language acquisition device—rather than the learnable class of languages, which is epiphenomenal and possibly hard to characterize. The learnability results informed by complexity studies are much more insightful. They strongly suggest that target grammars need to be objective, in the sense that the primitive elements of these grammars are based on objectively definable properties of the language itself. These considerations support the view that language acquisition proceeds primarily through data-driven learning of some form. (shrink)

Commercial interest in land (large-scale land acquisition, LaSLA) in developing countries is a hot topic for debate and its potential consequences are contentious: proponents conceive of it as much needed investment into the formerly neglected agricultural sector while opponents point to severe social and environmental effects. This contribution discusses, if and how sustainability standards and codes of conduct can contribute towards governing LaSLA. Based on the WCED-definition we develop a conception of sustainability that allows framing potential negative effects as (...) issues of intra- and intergenerational justice. In a second step we specify these claims of justice, drawing on a human rights approach as well as three guidelines for sustainable development, namely, efficiency, consistency and resilience, to arrive at six guidelines for social and environmental sustainability criteria of LaSLA. We compare our suggestions with existing proposals for sustainability standards of LaSLA and with the certification schemes for sustainable production of bioenergy. From this we draw lessons for development and implementation of sustainability standards for LaSLA. (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)

Large-scale land acquisition (LaSLA) in developing countries is discussed controversially in both the media as well as academia: Opponents point to negative social and environmental consequences. By contrast, proponents conceive of LaSLA as much needed investment into the formerly neglected agricultural sector. This contribution aims at analyzing LaSLA’s environmental dimension against the background of strong sustainability. To this end, I will first introduce sustainable development as a normative concept based on claims for intra- and intergenerational justice. Subsequently, I will (...) argue in favor of a conception of strong sustainability and employ this conception in developing guidelines for the sustainable handling of natural capital. By outlining the main drivers and consequences of LaSLA, the contribution hopes to demonstrate that proponents conceive of LaSLA as a potential solution to several sustainability problems, notably answering growing worldwide demand for agricultural commodities by increasing agricultural yields, substituting agrofuels for fossil fuels and providing acreage for offsetting carbon emissions. Against this background I argue that if LaSLA causes environmental externalities, it actually increases the problems it is supposed to resolve. Thereby, I develop sustainability criteria in regard to LaSLA’s environmental consequences. (shrink)

How people refer to objects in the world, how people comprehend reference, and how children acquire an understanding of and an ability to use reference.

Ducks lay eggs' is a true sentence, and `ducks are female' is a false one. Similarly, `mosquitoes carry the West Nile virus' is obviously true, whereas `mosquitoes don't carry the West Nile virus' is patently false. This is so despite the egg-laying ducks' being a subset of the female ones and despite the number of mosquitoes that don't carry the virus being ninety-nine times the number that do. Puzzling facts such as these have made generic sentences defy adequate semantic treatment. (...) However complex the truth conditions of generics appear to be, though, young children grasp generics more quickly and readily than seemingly simpler quantifiers such as `all' and `some'. I present an account of generics that not only illuminates the strange truth conditions of generics, but also explains how young children find them so comparatively easy to acquire. I then argue that generics give voice to our most cognitively primitive generalizations and that this hypothesis accounts for a variety of facts ranging from acquisition patterns to cross-linguistic data concerning the phonological articulation of operators. I go on to develop an account of the nature of these cognitively fundamental generalizations and argue that this account explains the strange truth-conditional behavior of generics. (shrink)

Abstract: By briefly sketching some important ancient accounts of the connections between psychology and moral education, I hope to illuminate the significance of the contemporary debate on the nature of emotion and to reveal its stakes. I begin the essay with a brief discussion of intellectualism in Socrates and the Stoics, and Plato's and Posidonius's respective attacks against it. Next, I examine the two current leading philosophical accounts of emotion: the cognitive theory and the noncognitive theory. I maintain that the (...) noncognitive theory better explains human behavior and experience and has more empirical support than the cognitive theory. In the third section of the essay I argue that recent empirical research on emotional contagion and mirroring processes provides important new evidence for the noncognitive theory. In the final section, I draw some preliminary conclusions about moral education and the acquisition of virtue. (shrink)

In LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited, Jerry Fodor argues that concept learning of any kind—even for complex concepts—is simply impossible. In order to avoid the conclusion that all concepts, primitive and complex, are innate, he argues that concept acquisition depends on purely noncognitive biological processes. In this paper, we show (1) that Fodor fails to establish that concept learning is impossible, (2) that his own biological account of concept acquisition is unworkable, and (3) that there are (...) in fact many promising general models for explaining how concepts are learned. (shrink)

Poverty of the Stimulus Arguments have convinced many linguists and philosophers of language that a domain specific language acquisition device (LAD) is necessary to account for language learning. Here we review empirical evidence that casts doubt on the necessity of this domain specific device. We suggest that more attention needs to be paid to the early stages of language acquisition. Many seemingly innate language-related abilities have to be learned over the course of several months. Further, the language input (...) contains rich stochastic information that can be accessed by domain-general learning mechanisms. Computer simulation has shown how mechanisms that are not domain specific can exploit the information contained in language. We conclude that (i) Poverty of the Stimulus Arguments need to be conceptually clarified and (ii) more empirical research needs to be carried out before we can rule out that data driven general purpose mechanisms can account for language learning. (shrink)

The recent literature on the theory of knowledge has taken a distinctive turn by focusing on the role of the cognitive and intellectual virtues in the acquisition of knowledge. The main contours and motivations for such virtue-theoretic accounts of knowledge are here sketched and it is argued that virtue epistemology in its most plausible form can be regarded as a refined form of reliabilism, and thus a variety of epistemic externalism. Moreover, it is claimed that there is strong empirical (...) support in favour of the virtue epistemic position so understood, and an empirical study regarding the cognitive processes employed by medical experts in their diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy is cited in this regard. In general, it is argued that one can best account for 'expert' knowledge in terms of a virtue-theoretic epistemology that retains key reliabilist features. It is thus shown that understanding knowledge along virtue-theoretic lines has important implications for our understanding of how knowledge is acquired, and thus for the philosophy of education. (shrink)

Critics of Robert Nozick's libertarian political theory often allege that the theory in general and its account of property rights in particular lack sufficient foundations. A key difficulty is thought to lie in his account of how portions of the world which no one yet owns can justly come to be initially acquired. But the difficulty is illusory, because (contrary to what both Nozick and his critics assume) the concept of justice does not meaningfully apply to initial acquisition in (...) the first place. Moreover, the principle of self-ownership provides a solid foundation for Nozick's libertarianism, and when seen in the light of that principle and its full implications, the standard purported examples of injustices in acquisition are revealed to be nothing of the kind. Footnotesa The original draft of this paper was written in the summer of 2002 while I was a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University. I thank the directors of the Center, Fred D. Miller, Jr., Ellen Frankel Paul, and Jeffrey Paul, for hosting me. I also thank colloquium audience members at Bowling Green State University for comments on that draft. (shrink)

A controversy in political philosophy and applied ethics concerns the validity of duty-imposing powers, that is, rights entitling one person to impose new duties on others without their consent. Many philosophers have criticized as unplausible any such moral right, in particular that of appropriating private property unilaterally. Some, finding duty-imposing powers weird, unfamiliar or baseless, have argued that principles of justified acquisition should be rejected; others have required them to satisfy exacting criteria. I investigate the many ways in which (...) we regularly impose duties on one another without prior consent. I show that doing so is not weird, and I offer criteria which demarcate the reasonable from the worrisome aspects of duty-imposing powers. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the acquisition of certain aspects of the meaning of epistemic modal verbs. Epistemic modals encode the probability, predictability or certainty of the proposition embedded under the modal verb. The sentences in (1) are examples of epistemic modality1.

Nativists inspired by Chomsky are apt to provide arguments with the following general form: languages exhibit interesting generalizations that are not suggested by casual (or even intensive) examination of what people actually say; correspondingly, adults (i.e., just about anyone above the age of four) know much more about language than they could plausibly have learned on the basis of their experience; so absent an alternative account of the relevant generalizations and speakers' (tacit) knowledge of them, one should conclude that there (...) are substantive "universal" principles of human grammar and, as a result of human biology, children can only acquire languages that conform to these principles. According to Pullum and Scholz, linguists need not suppose that children are innately endowed with "specific contingent facts about natural languages." But Pullum and Scholz don't consider the kinds of facts that really impress nativists. Nor do they offer any plausible acquisition scenarios that would culminate in the acquisition of languages that exhibit the kinds of rich and interrelated generalizations that are exhibited by natural languages. As we stress, good poverty-of-stimulus arguments are based on specific principles - - confirmed by drawing on (negative and crosslinguistic) data unavailable to children -- that help explain a range of independently established linguistic phenomena. If subsequent psycholinguistic experiments show that very young children already know such principles, that strengthens the case for nativism; and if further investigation shows that children sometimes "try out" constructions that are unattested in the local language, but only if such constructions are attested in other human languages, then the case for nativism is made stronger still. We illustrate these points by considering an apparently disparate -- but upon closer inspection, interestingly related -- cluster of phenomena involving: negative polarity items, the interpretation of 'or', binding theory, and displays of Romance and Germanic constructions in child- English.. (shrink)

Advocates of linguistic pragmatics often appeal to a principle which Paul Grice called Modified Occam's Razor: 'Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity'. Superficially, Grice's principle seems a routine application of the principle of parsimony ('Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity'). But parsimony arguments, though common in science, are notoriously problematic, and their use by Griceans faces numerous objections. This paper argues that Modified Occam's Razor makes considerably more sense in light of certain assumptions about the processes (...) involved in language acquisition, and it describes recent empirical findings that bear these assumptions out. The resulting account solves several difficulties that otherwise confront Grice's principle, and it draws attention to problematic assumptions involved in using parsimony to argue for pragmatic accounts of linguistic phenomena. (shrink)

Suppose libertarians could prove that durable, unqualified private property rights could be created through 'original acquisition' of unowned resources in a state of nature. Such a proof would cast serious doubt on the legitimacy of the modern state. It could also render the approach to property rights that I favour irrelevant. I argue here that none of the familiar Lockean-libertarian arguments for a strong natural right to acquisition succeed, and that any successful argument for grounding a right to (...) acquire would have to use my favoured approach to property rights - the 'vector-sum' approach. I conclude with some doubts about original acquisition theory and natural property rights. (shrink)

In LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited , Jerry Fodor argues that concept learning of any kind—even for complex concepts—is simply impossible. In order to avoid the conclusion that all concepts, primitive and complex, are innate, he argues that concept acquisition depends on purely biological processes. In this paper, we show (1) that Fodor fails to establish that concept learning is impossible, (2) that his own biological account of concept acquisition is unworkable, and (3) that there are (...) in fact many promising general models for explaining how concepts are learned. (shrink)

: Al-Ghazali on Power, Causation, and 'Acquisition' Edward Omar Moad In Al-Iqtişādfial-I'tiqād (Moderation in belief ), at the end of his chapter on divine power, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali writes, "No created thing comes about through another [created thing]. Rather, all come about through [divine] power." A precise understanding of what al-Ghazali means by this statement requires an understanding of his conception of power. Here, we will articulate this conception of power and show how it renders a distinctive occasionalist thesis (...) that follows from al-Ghazali's doctrine of the pervasiveness of divine power. Second, we will review an argument by al-Ghazali against natural necessity and show that the argument turns on the clear implication that, on empirical grounds, al-Ghazali's conception of power is the only understanding of causation that we have. This follows from an epistemology of power held by al-Ghazali that bears basic similarities to that of John Locke. Third, we will address the tension between such an epistemology of power and the implications of occasionalism with a look at al-Ghazali's discussion of the theory of kash, or 'acquisition.'. (shrink)

De Villiers and de Villiers (2000) propose that the acquisition of the syntactic device of sentential complementation is a necessary condition for the acquisition of theory of mind (ToM). It might be argued that ToM mastery is simply a consequence of grammatical development. On the other hand, there is also good evidence (Garfield, Peterson & Perry 2001) that social learning is involved in ToM acquisition. We investigate the connection between linguistic and social-cognitive development, arguing that pretence is (...) crucially involved in the acquisition of ToM. We demonstrate that successful understanding of pretence discourse, including the syntactic and semantic properties of sentential complements in the context of verbs of pretence, develops well before ToM as measured by standard tests of false belief understanding. We argue that pretence plays a crucial role in cognitive development, allowing children to gain familiarity with mental representations that fail to accord with reality, and allowing them to learn the syntax and semantics of verbs taking sentential complements, thus enabling conversational exchange involving embedded complement clauses and the acquisition of ToM. We also demonstrate that the developmental track of pretence and ToM allows us to see how social, conceptual and linguistic development work together to scaffold the development of the understanding of mind. We conclude that children’s early involvement in pretend play and conversation paves the way both for their subsequent development of a ToM-based understanding of the mind as a guiding network of propositional attitudes, and for their further development of syntactic competence with complementation for doxastic and epistemic verbs. (shrink)

: How much violence can a society expect its members to accept? A comparison between the language theories of Julia Kristeva and Jacques Lacan is the starting point for answering this question. A look at the early stages of language acquisition exposes the sacrificial logic of patriarchal society. Are those forces that restrict the individual to be conceived in a martial imagery of castration or is it possible that an existing society critically questions those points of socialization that leave (...) their members in a state of homelessness? The following considerations should help to distinguish between unavoidable and avoidable forms of violence. (shrink)

This essay adjudicates between theoretical models of psychological concept acquisition. I provide new reasons to be skeptical about both simulationist and modularist models. I then defend the scientific-theory-theory account against familiar objections. I conclude by arguing that the scientific-theory-theory account must be supplemented by an account of hypothesis discovery.

This thesis aims to develop a psychologically plausible account of concepts by integrating key insights from philosophy (on the metaphysical basis for concept possession) and psychology (on the mechanisms underlying concept acquisition). I adopt an approach known as informational atomism, developed by Jerry Fodor. Informational atomism is the conjunction of two theses: (i) informational semantics, according to which conceptual content is constituted exhaustively by nomological mind–world relations; and (ii) conceptual atomism, according to which (lexical) concepts have no internal structure. (...) I argue that informational semantics needs to be supplemented by allowing content-constitutive rules of inference (“meaning postulates”). This is because the content of one important class of concepts, the logical terms, is not plausibly informational. And since, it is argued, no principled distinction can be drawn between logical concepts and the rest, the problem that this raises is a general one. An immediate difficulty is that Quine’s classic arguments against the analytic/synthetic distinction suggest that there can be no principled basis for distinguishing content-constitutive rules from the rest. I show that this concern can be overcome by taking a psychological approach: there is a fact of the matter as to whether or not a particular inference is governed by a mentally-represented inference rule, albeit one that analytic philosophy does not have the resources to determine. I then consider the implications of this approach for concept acquisition. One mechanism underlying concept acquisition is the development of perceptual detectors for the objects that we encounter. I investigate how this might work, by drawing on recent ideas in ethology on ‘learning instincts’, and recent insights into the neurological basis for perceptual learning. What emerges is a view of concept acquisition as involving a complex interplay between innate constraints and environmental input. This supports Fodor’s recent move away from radical concept nativism: concept acquisition requires innate mechanisms, but does not require that concepts themselves be innate. (shrink)

Contextual vocabulary acquisition (CVA) is the deliberate acquisition of a meaning for a word in a text by reasoning from context, where “context” includes: (1) the reader’s “internalization” of the surrounding text, i.e., the reader’s “mental model” of the word’s “textual context” (hereafter, “co-text” [3]) integrated with (2) the reader’s prior knowledge (PK), but it excludes (3) external sources such as dictionaries or people. CVA is what you do when you come across an unfamiliar word in your reading, (...) realize that you don’t know what it means, decide that you need to know what it means in order to understand the passage, but there is no one around to ask, and it is not in the dictionary (or you are too lazy to look it up). In such a case, you can try to figure out its meaning “from context”, i.e., from clues in the co-text together with your prior knowledge. Our computational theory of CVA—implemented in a the SNePS knowledge representation and reasoning system [28]—begins with a stored knowledge base containing SNePS representations of relevant PK, inputs SNePS representations of a passage containing an unfamiliar word, and draws inferences from these two (integrated) information sources. When asked to define the word, definition algorithms deductively search the resulting network for information of the sort that might be found in a dictionary definition, outputting a definition frame whose slots are the kinds of features that a definition might contain (e.g., class membership, properties, actions, spatio-temporal information, etc.) and whose slot-fillers contain information gleaned from the network [6–8,20,23,24]. We are investigating ways to make our system more robust, to embed it in a naturallanguage-processing system, and to incorporate morphological information. Our research group, including reading educators, is also applying our methods to the develop-. (shrink)

This study is concerned with the properties of the disjunction operator, or, and the acquisition of these properties by English-speaking children. Previous research has concluded that adult truth conditions for logical connectives are acquired relatively late in the course of language development. With particular reference to disjunction, the results of several studies have led to two claims. First, it has been argued that the full range of truth-conditions associated with inclusive-or is not initially available to children; instead, children are (...) supposed to interpret disjunction using the truth conditions that are associated with exclusive-or (e.g., Beilin and Lust 1975; Braine and Rumain 1981, 1983; Paris 1973). A second, related claim is that even when children respond as if they have access to the complete range of truth conditions, their responses result from the failure to distinguish or from and (Paris, 1973). (shrink)

We discuss a research project that develops and applies algorithms for computational contextual vocabulary acquisition (CVA): learning the meaning of unknown words from context. We try to unify a disparate literature on the topic of CVA from psychology, first- and secondlanguage acquisition, and reading science, in order to help develop these algorithms: We use the knowledge gained from the computational CVA system to build an educational curriculum for enhancing students’ abilities to use CVA strategies in their reading of (...) science texts at the middle-school and college undergraduate levels. The knowledge gained from case studies of students using our CVA techniques feeds back into further development of our computational theory. Keywords: artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, reading, reasoning, science education, vocabulary acquisition. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of data manipulation in scientific experiments. It will be shown that in many cases raw, unprocessed data is not produced, but rather a form of processed data that will be referred to as a data model. The language of data models will be used to provide a framework within which to understand a recent debate about the status of data and data manipulation. It will be seen that a description in terms of data models allows (...) one to understand cases in which data acquisition and data manipulation cannot be separated into two independent activities. (shrink)

“Contextual” vocabulary acquisition is the active, deliberate acquisition of a meaning for a word in a text by reasoning from textual clues and prior knowledge, including language knowledge and hypotheses developed from prior encounters with the word, but without external sources of help such as dictionaries or people. But what is “context”? Is it just the surrounding text? Does it include the reader’s background knowledge? I argue that the appropriate context for contextual vocabulary acquisition is the reader’s (...) “internalization” of the text “integrated” into the reader’s “prior” knowledge via belief revision. (shrink)

Consumers of software often face an acquisition-mode decision, namely whether to purchase or pirate that software. In terms of consumer welfare, consumers who pirate software may stand in opposition to those who purchase it. Marketers also face a decision whether to attempt to thwart that piracy or to ignore, if not encourage it as an aid to their softwares diffusion, and policymakers face the decision whether to adopt interventionist policies, which are government-centric, or laissez faire policies, which are marketer-centric. (...) Here in order to assess the decision-making of all three of these stakeholders, we focus on the consumers point-of-view as central and examine it by considering on a comparative basis the ethical dimension versus other dimensions, including economic, legal, and other salient consumer behavior considerations. Based on a survey of 689 software consumers conducted over the Internet, the results indicate that ethics as a factor is embedded in a multidimensional set of determinant factors influencing software piracy, including attitudes, legal aspects, social support, perceptions of economic loss and age. Policy and research implications, based on these findings, are provided. (shrink)

Persistence theories of causation – such as transference theory, conserved-quantity theory, and Douglas Ehring's theory – attempt to analyzecausation in terms of some persisting entityconnecting cause and effect. While mostpersistence accounts are intended as empiricaltheories, this article develops a persistenceanalysis of the concept of causation. The basic idea is that the central concept ofdirect causation can be analyzed in terms ofproperty acquisition. The analysis cohereswith our ordinary causal judgments andprovides a straightforward explanation of thedirection of causation. It also explains (...) whybackwards causation is conceptually problematic. (shrink)

Underlying this article is the conviction that social scientists typically take on board a too restrictive concept of knowledge acquisition. The paper propounds a new concept of knowledge acquisition, one which is self-referential (i.e. which affects one's presuppositions) and which draws upon the unfamiliar to reveal and undercut the familiar. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it is to show that this concept of knowledge acqui sition is already anticipated by Foucault, that it is a major (...) concern of his, and that it is a common thread throughout his work. Consequently, a new light can be thrown on both Foucault's archaeology and his genealogy: both are directed towards a self-referential form of knowledge, and as such the two periods are shown to have more in common than conventionally assumed. Second (and conversely), the aim of the paper is to elucidate this self-referential type of knowledge by showing how it is used by Foucault. Key Words: archaeology • Foucault • genealogy • history • methodology • Nietzsche • past • philosophy of social sciences • present • structuralism. (shrink)

Some empirical evidence in the artificial language acquisition literature has been taken to suggest that statistical learning mechanisms are insufficient for extracting structural information from an artificial language. According to the more than one mechanism (MOM) hypothesis, at least two mechanisms are required in order to acquire language from speech: (a) a statistical mechanism for speech segmentation; and (b) an additional rule-following mechanism in order to induce grammatical regularities. In this article, we present a set of neural network studies (...) demonstrating that a single statistical mechanism can mimic the apparent discovery of structural regularities, beyond the segmentation of speech. We argue that our results undermine one argument for the MOM hypothesis. (shrink)

A theory is presented which proposes that knowledge acquisition involves direct perception of schematic information in the form of structural and transformational invariances. Individual components with salient verbal descriptions are considered conscious place-holders for non-conscious invariant schemes. It is speculated that theories positing mental construction have three related causes: The first is a lack of consciousness of the schema processing capacities of the right hemisphere; the second is the paucity of adequate words to express schematic relationships; and the last (...) involves the dominance of verbal processes in consciousness. Philosophical theories are reviewed and schematic data relevant to biological survival is offered. Applications to education are suggested. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the acquisition of the semantics and pragmatics of evidentiality. Evidentiality markers encode the speaker’s source for the information being reported in the utterance. While languages like English express evidentiality in lexical markers (I saw that it was raining vs. I heard that it was raining), other languages grammaticalize evidentiality. In Turkish, for all instances of past reference there is an obligatory choice between the suffixes -DI (realized as –di, -dı, -du, -dü, -ti, -tı, -tu, (...) -tü depending on the vowel harmony) and –mIs (realized as -mis, -mıs, -mus, -müs depending on the vowel harmony). These past-tense morphemes also carry evidential meanings: the morpheme –DI is used to describe witnessed events and the morpheme –mIs is used to describe information acquired from someone (hearsay) or some clue (inference). (shrink)

Recent research suggests that language evolution is a process of cultural change, in which linguistic structures are shaped through repeated cycles of learning and use by domain-general mechanisms. This paper draws out the implications of this viewpoint for understanding the problem of language acquisition, which is cast in a new, and much more tractable, form. In essence, the child faces a problem of induction, where the objective is to coordinate with others (C-induction), rather than to model the structure of (...) the natural world (N-induction). We argue that, of the two, C-induction is dramatically easier. More broadly, we argue that understanding the acquisition of any cultural form, whether linguistic or otherwise, during development, requires considering the corresponding question of how that cultural form arose through processes of cultural evolution. This perspective helps resolve the “logical” problem of language acquisition and has far-reaching implications for evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

Nativists inspired by Chomsky are apt to provide arguments with the following general form: languages exhibit interesting generalizations that are not suggested by casual (or even intensive) examination of what people actually say; correspondingly, adults (i.e., just about anyone above the age of four) know much more about language than they could plausibly have learned on the basis of their experience; so absent an alternative account of the relevant generalizations and speakers' (tacit) knowledge of them, one should conclude that there (...) are substantive "universal" principles of human grammar and, as a result of human biology, children can only acquire languages that conform to these principles. According to Pullum and Scholz, linguists need not suppose that children are innately endowed with "specific contingent facts about natural languages." But Pullum and Scholz don't consider the kinds of facts that really impress nativists. Nor do they offer any plausible acquisition scenarios that would culminate in the acquisition of languages that exhibit the kinds of rich and interrelated generalizations that are exhibited by natural languages. As we stress, good poverty-of-stimulus arguments are based on specific principles - - confirmed by drawing on (negative and crosslinguistic) data unavailable to children -- that help explain a range of independently established linguistic phenomena. If subsequent psycholinguistic experiments show that very young children already know such principles, that strengthens the case for nativism; and if further investigation shows that children sometimes "try out" constructions that are unattested in the local language, but only if such constructions are attested in other human languages, then the case for nativism is made stronger still. We illustrate these points by considering an apparently disparate -- but upon closer inspection, interestingly related -- cluster of phenomena involving: negative polarity items, the interpretation of 'or', binding theory, and displays of Romance and Germanic constructions in child- English.. (shrink)

Natural language is full of patterns that appear to fit with general linguistic rules but are ungrammatical. There has been much debate over how children acquire these “linguistic restrictions,” and whether innate language knowledge is needed. Recently, it has been shown that restrictions in language can be learned asymptotically via probabilistic inference using the minimum description length (MDL) principle. Here, we extend the MDL approach to give a simple and practical methodology for estimating how much linguistic data are required to (...) learn a particular linguistic restriction. Our method provides a new research tool, allowing arguments about natural language learnability to be made explicit and quantified for the first time. We apply this method to a range of classic puzzles in language acquisition. We find some linguistic rules appear easily statistically learnable from language experience only, whereas others appear to require additional learning mechanisms (e.g., additional cues or innate constraints). (shrink)

Theories of number concepts often suppose that the natural numbers are acquired as children learn to count and as they draw an induction based on their interpretation of the first few count words. In a bold critique of this general approach, Rips, Asmuth, Bloomfield [Rips, L., Asmuth, J. & Bloomfield, A. (2006). Giving the boot to the bootstrap: How not to learn the natural numbers. Cognition, 101, B51–B60.] argue that such an inductive inference is consistent with a representational system that (...) clearly does not express the natural numbers and that possession of the natural numbers requires further principles that make the inductive inference superfluous. We argue that their critique is unsuccessful. Provided that children have access to a suitable initial system of representation, the sort of inductive inference that Rips et al. call into question can in fact facilitate the acquisition of larger integer concepts without the addition of any further principles. Ó 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Mental-content verbs such as think, believe, imagine and hope seem to pose special problems for the young language learner. One possible explanation for these diYculties is that the concepts that these verbs express are hard to grasp and therefore their acquisition must await relevant conceptual development. According to a diVerent, perhaps complementary, proposal, a major contributor to the diYculty of these items lies with the informational requirements for identifying them from the contexts in which they appear. The experiments reported (...) here explore the implications of these proposals by investigating the contribution of observational and linguistic cues to the acquisition of mental predicate vocabulary. We Wrst demonstrate that particular observed situations can be helpful in prompting reference to mental contents, speciWcally, contexts that include a salient and/or unusual mental state such as a false belief. We then compare the potency of such observational support to the reliability of alternate or concomitant syntactic information (e.g., sentential complementation) in tasks where both children and adults are asked to hypothesize the meaning of novel verbs. The Wndings support the eYcacy of false belief situations for increasing the saliency of mental state descriptions, but also show that.. (shrink)

This study is concerned with the properties of the disjunction operator, or, and the acquisition of these properties by English-speaking children. Previous research has concluded that adult truth conditions for logical connectives are acquired relatively late in the course of language development. With particular reference to disjunction, the results of several studies have led to two claims. First, it has been argued that the full range of truth-conditions associated with inclusive-or is not initially available to children; instead, children are (...) supposed to interpret disjunction using the truth conditions that are associated with exclusive-or (e.g., Beilin and Lust 1975; Braine and Rumain 1981, 1983; Paris 1973). A second, related claim is that even when children respond as if they have access to the complete range of truth conditions, their responses result from the failure to distinguish or from and (Paris, 1973). Different conclusions were reached in recent work by Chierchia, Crain, Guasti and Thornton (1998). The experiments conducted by Chierchia et al. (1998) draw upon a distinction between linguistic contexts. In one type of context, the inclusive-or reading of disjunction is available. By contrast, in another type of context, the exclusive-or reading of disjunction is highly preferred; the truth conditions that are uniquely associated with the inclusive-or reading are eliminated in such contexts due to conversational implicatures. One context that cancels conversational implicatures is called the Prediction Mode by Chierchia et al. (1998). Notice that a prediction like (1) is consistent with different scenarios. (shrink)

We are reviewing and summarizing evidence for the processes of acquisition of information outside of conscious awareness (processing information about covariations, nonconscious indirect and interactive inferences, self-perpetuation of procedural knowledge). A considerable amount of data indicates that as compared to consciously controlled cognition, the nonconscious information-acquisition processes are not only much faster but also structurally more sophisticated in the sense that they are capable of efficient processing of multidimensional and interactive relations between variables. Those mechanisms of nonconscious (...) class='Hi'>acquisition of information provide a major channel for the development of procedural knowledge which is indispensable for such important aspects of cognitive functioning as encoding and interpretation of stimuli and the triggering emotional reactions. (shrink)

In attempting to learn more about the relationship between social structure and behavior, this chapter identifies the transforming conditions that promote an actor's acquisition of a noninstitutionalized role. The role concept is modified to be seen not only as an aspect of social structure, but connected to the life situation of a performer, constituting a person-role formula. Being defined according to the degree of involvement an actor will have with the proffered role, a person-role formula may be based on (...) embracement, integration, downgrading, or avoidance. Roles are transformed into one of these possible relationships through three stages (1) role discrepancy, (2) role typification, and (3) role validation. (shrink)

An experiment is reported which tests for positive confirmation bias in a setting in which individuals choose what information to buy, prior to making a decision. The design – an adaptation of Wason's selection task – reveals the use that subjects make of information after buying it. Strong evidence of positive confirmation bias, in both information acquisition and information use, is found; and this bias is found to be robust to experience. It is suggested that the bias results from (...) a pattern of reasoning which, although producing sub-optimal decisions, is internally coherent and which is self-reinforcing. (shrink)

Transplantation is a medically successful and cost-effective way to treat people whose organs have failed--but not enough organs are available to meet demand. Ethics and the Acquisition of Organs is concerned with the major ethical problems raised by policies for acquiring organs. The main topics are the rights of the dead, the role of the family, opt in and opt out systems, the conscription of organs, living organ donation from adults and children, directed donation and priority for donors, and (...) the sale of organs. In this ground-breaking work, T. M. Wilkinson uses concepts from moral and political theory such as autonomy, rights, posthumous interests, justice, and well-being, in a context informed by the clinical, legal, and policy aspects of transplantation. The result is a rigorous philosophical exploration of real problems and options. He argues that the ethics of acquiring organs for transplantation is not only of great intellectual interest, but also of practical importance. As such, this book will be of profit not only to students and academics who work in applied ethics and bioethics, but also to the lawyers, policy-makers, clinicians, and lobby groups interested in transplantation. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper I present a well known objection to meaning holism, according to which holism is inconsistent with natural language being learnable. Then I show that the objection fails if language acquisition includes stages of partial grasp of the meaning of at least some expressions, and I argue that standard model theoretic semantics cannot fully capture such stages. In the second section the above claims are supported through a review of current research into language (...) acquisition. Finally, in the third section it is argued that contemporary algebraic logical systems consist in a superior formal vehicle through which to capture stages of partial grasp of meaning; this claim is supported by concrete examples. (shrink)

Locke & Bogin's (L&B's) main thesis can be extended to the acquisition of the phrasal vocabulary in that the acquisition of much phrasal vocabulary combines the acquisition of linguistic knowledge with pragmatics and performance and in that the apprenticeship system for such learning begins to flower in adolescence.

This paper is concerned with the acquisition of the semantics and pragmatics of evidential markers in Turkish. Evidential markers encode the speaker’s source for the information being reported in the utterance. While some languages like English express evidentiality by lexical markers (I saw that it was raining vs. I heard that it was raining) Turkish grammaticalizes evidentiality through specialized markers. Specifically, for all instances of past reference in Turkish there is an obligatory choice between the following two suffixes: -DI1, (...) (denotes the past of direct experience) and –mIş2 (denotes the indirect experience). These morphemes also carry evidential meanings: the morpheme –DI is used to describe witnessed events and the morpheme –mIş is used to describe information acquired from someone else (Hearsay) or some clue (Inference): (1) a. Çocuk oyun oyna -DI Child game play PAST evid. ‘The child played’ (I saw it) b. Çocuk oyun oyna –mIş Child game play PAST evid. ‘The child played’ (I heard it or I inferred it) As mentioned above, on the semantic level evidential morphemes encode source distinctions. On the pragmatic level, evidential markers generate conversational implicatures. Logically, (1a) is compatible with (1b) as both sentences describe the child playing. However, in conversation, (1b) would exclude (1a) – hence it would implicate (2). (shrink)

This study surveys one element of the government standards of conduct, named "Misuse of Position for Personal Gain", assesses the results, and compares various acquisition strategies to identify high risk procurement where individual misuse of position for personal gain may be more pervasive. It also provides a valuable historical summary of government standards of conduct. The study concludes with an assessment of enforcement mechanisms, or lack thereof, to ensure that government procurement is conducted in a manner which gains public (...) trust and confidence. (shrink)

Number terms and quantifiers share a range of linguistic (syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic) properties. On the basis of these similarities, one might expect these 2 classes of linguistic expression to pose similar problems to children acquiring language. We report here the results of an experiment that explicitly compared the acquisition of numerical expressions (two, four) and quantificational (some, all) expressions in younger and older 3-year-olds. Each group showed adult-like preferences for “exact” interpretations when evaluating number terms; however they did (...) not use the corresponding upper bounded interpretation when evaluating the quantifier some. Apparently, children follow different procedures for learning and evaluating numerals and quantifiers. These findings have implications for theories of number representation in child and adult grammars. (shrink)

Computational learning theory explores the limits of learnability. Studying language acquisition from this perspective involves identifying classes of languages that are learnable from the available data, within the limits of time and computational resources available to the learner. Different models of learning can yield radically different learnability results, where these depend on the assumptions of the model about the nature of the learning process, and the data, time, and resources that learners have access to. To the extent that such (...) assumptions accurately reflect human language learning, a model that invokes them can offer important insights into the formal properties of natural languages, and the way in which their representations might be efficiently acquired. In this chapter we consider several computational learning models that have been applied to the language learning task. Some of these have yielded results that suggest that the class of natural languages cannot be efficiently learned from the primary linguistic data (PLD) available to children, through.. (shrink)

A recent hypothesis in empirical brain research on language is that the fundamental difference between animal and human communication systems is captured by the distinction between finite-state and more complex phrase-structure grammars, such as context-free and context-sensitive grammars. However, the relevance of this distinction for the study of language as a neurobiological system has been questioned and it has been suggested that a more relevant and partly analogous distinction is that between non-adjacent and adjacent dependencies. Online memory resources are central (...) to the processing of non-adjacent dependencies as information has to be maintained across intervening material. One proposal is that an external memory device in the form of a limited push-down stack is used to process non-adjacent dependencies. We tested this hypothesis in an artificial grammar learning paradigm where subjects acquired non-adjacent dependencies implicitly. Generally, we found no qualitative differences between the acquisition of non-adjacent dependencies and adjacent dependencies. This suggests that although the acquisition of non-adjacent dependencies requires more exposure to the acquisition material, it utilizes the same mechanisms used for acquiring adjacent dependencies. We challenge the push-down stack model further by testing its processing predictions for nested and crossed multiple non-adjacent dependencies. The push-down stack model is partly supported by the results, and we suggest that stack-like properties are some among many natural properties characterizing the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms that implement the online memory resources used in language and structured sequence processing. (shrink)

Several business trends have forced accelerated efforts to acquire competitive intelligence. While coverage of business ethics in classroom instruction has accelerated, concerns over unethical competitive information acquisition strategies persist. The frequency of use by individuals, their companies, and their competitors is assessed, and the findings reveal the extent of this ethics gap.

In the present study business managers in Kabi Pharmacia Company were trained in the use of the autonomous method in their decision-making about solving real life business ethics problems. According to the psychological theories of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Kohlberg, it is possible to promote the acquisition of the autonomous ethical skill by instruction and training. Indeed, participation in a one-day educational programme which focused on the training of the autonomous cognitive ability and not on the transfer of moral content, (...) was sufficient to provide a shift in the mode of decision-making about business ethics problems towards the autonomous ethical function. This change was still stable one month later. A test was constructed by items representing current business ethics conflicts in order to assess ethical function. (shrink)

The acquisition of the passive in English poses a learnability problem. Most transitive verbs have passive forms (e.g., kick/was kicked by), tempting the child to form a productive rule of passivization deriving passive.participles from active forms. However, some verbs cannot be passivized (e.g. cost/*was cost by). Given that children do not receive negative evidence telling them which strings are ungrammatical, what prevents them from overgeneralizing a productive passive rule to the exceptional verbs (or if they do incorrectly pas- sivize (...) such verbs, how do they recover)? One possible solution is that children are conservative: they only generate passives for those verbs that they have heard in passive sentences in the input. We show that this proposal is incorrect. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod (P&G) describe a mechanism by which the situation models of dialog participants become progressively aligned via priming at different levels. This commentary attempts to characterize how alignment and routinization can be extended into the language acquisition domain by establishing links between alignment and joint attention, and between routinization and grammatical construction learning.

Se realizó revisión bibliográfica sobre la adquisición de las habilidades de razonamiento clínico en los estudiantes de medicina y sus principales deficiencias, los principios didácticos que rigen la actividad y el desarrollo de las habilidades en la Educación General, así como su aplicación en el proceso de enseñanza- aprendizaje en la carrera de Medicina, concretados en cómo realizar el enfoque de dicho proceso en los diferentes momentos de la actividad: orientación, ejecución y control. A bibliographical revision on Medicine students (...) class='Hi'>acquisition of clinical reasoning skills and its main shortcomings, the didactic principles that rule the activity and development of skills in General education as well as its implementation in the teaching learning process in medicine, focused on how to approach to such a process in the different stages of the activity: guidance, implementation and control, was carried out. (shrink)

Number terms and quantifiers share a range of linguistic (syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic) properties. On the basis of these similarities, one might expect these 2 classes of linguistic expression to pose similar problems to children acquiring language. We report here the results of an experiment that explicitly compared the acquisition of numerical expressions (two, four) and quantificational (some, all) expressions in younger and older 3-year-olds. Each group showed adult-like preferences for “exact” interpretations when evaluating number terms; however they did (...) not use the corresponding upper bounded interpretation when evaluating the quantifier some. Apparently, children follow different procedures for learning and evaluating numerals and quantifiers. These findings have implications for theories of number representation in child and adult grammars. (shrink)

This research attempts to understand howchildren learn to use language. Instead ofusing syntax-based grammar rules to model thedifferences between children''s language andadult language, as has been done in the past, anew model is proposed. In the new researchmodel, children acquire language by listeningto the examples of speech that they hear intheir environment and subsequently use thespeech examples that have been previously heardin similar contextual situations. A computermodel is generated to simulate this new modelof language acquisition. The MALL computerprogram will (...) listen to examples of humanspeech, as would occur around a child, and thentry to use these examples in new situationsthat are similar to the contextual situationsin which the language examples were heard. This will provide a better understanding of howchildren learn to use language and howeducators can assist or improve the languagelearning process by providing required examplesof speech or by helping children to develop abetter understanding of similarities betweenvarious contexts. (shrink)

We describe a pattern acquisition algorithm that learns, in an unsupervised fashion, a streamlined representation of linguistic structures from a plain natural-language corpus. This paper addresses the issues of learning structured knowledge from a large-scale natural language data set, and of generalization to unseen text. The implemented algorithm represents sentences as paths on a graph whose vertices are words (or parts of words). Significant patterns, determined by recursive context-sensitive statistical inference, form new vertices. Linguistic constructions are represented (...) by trees composed of significant patterns and their associated equivalence classes. An input module allows the algorithm to be subjected to a standard test of English as a Second Language (ESL) profi- ciency. The results are encouraging: the model attains a level of performance considered to be “intermediate” for 9th-grade students, despite having been trained on a corpus (CHILDES) containing transcribed speech of parents directed to small children. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to discuss the nature of nonconceptual, as opposed to conceptual, states and their content, by exploring the suggestion that the distinction between the conceptual and the nonconceptual be mapped onto the distinction between the linguistic and the nonlinguistic. This approach gives special relevance to our intuitions about the cognitive relationship between small children and adults, especially regarding the acquisition of concepts, in the course of normal cognitive development. Assuming that there is a developmental (...) challenge to be met, the paper considers both the conceptualist and nonconceptualist strategies used to meet it; and concludes that conceptualism is a more satisfying option. (shrink)

We have previously shown that several brain areas are activated both during sequence learning at wake and during subsequent rapid-eye-movements (REM) sleep (Nat. Neurosci. 3 (2000) 831– 836), suggesting that REM sleep participates in the reprocessing of recent memory traces in humans. However, the nature of the reprocessed information remains open. Here, we show that regional cerebral reactivation during posttraining REM sleep is not merely related to the acquisition of basic visuomotor skills during prior practice of the serial reaction (...) time task, but rather to the implicit acquisition of the probabilistic rules that defined stimulus sequences. Moreover, functional connections between the reactivated cuneus and the striatum—the latter being critical for implicit sequence learning—are reinforced during REM sleep after practice on a probabilistic rather than on a random sequence of stimuli. Our results therefore support the hypothesis that REM sleep is deeply involved in the reprocessing and optimization of the high-order information contained in the material to be learned. In addition, we show that the level of acquisition of probabilistic rules attained prior to sleep is correlated to the increase in regional cerebral blood flow during subsequent REM sleep. This suggests that posttraining cerebral reactivation is modulated by the strength of the memory traces developed during the learning episode. Our data provide the first experimental evidence for a link between behavioral performance and cerebral reactivation during REM sleep. © 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

We outline an unsupervised language acquisition algorithm and offer some psycholinguistic support for a model based on it. Our approach resembles the Construction Grammar in its general philosophy, and the Tree Adjoining Grammar in its computational characteristics. The model is trained on a corpus of transcribed child-directed speech (CHILDES). The model’s ability to process novel inputs makes it capable of taking various standard tests of English that rely on forced-choice judgment and on magnitude estimation of linguistic acceptability. We report (...) encouraging results from several such tests, and discuss the limitations revealed by other tests in our present method of dealing with novel stimuli. (shrink)

This paper is about comparison and appraisal of Ken Wilber’s theory of the “three components or strands of knowledge” set forth especially in his Eye to Eye and Mark Edwards’s “Integral Cycle of Knowledge” which attempts through its critique to integrate Wilber’s developmental and epistemological models. Realizing the problem of today’s scientism, Wilber introduces the concepts of the “three eyes”—the eye of flesh, of reason, and of contemplation—thusconceiving science in a broad sense. Then in order to secure verification of the (...) knowledge he proposes the three basic components of knowledge acquisition: 1. instrumental injunction 2 Intuitive apprehension 3. Communal confirmation. In his essay, “The Integral Cycle of Knowledge,” Mark Edwards then points out themissing of an interpretive component and then he proceeds to form his own Integral Cycle of Knowledge by adding the component. Hen then integrates it into Wilber’s 4-quadrants framework as follows: UR: Injunctive strand → UL: Apprehensive strand → LL: Interpretive strand → LR: Validative strand. Their attempts to provide a solid epistemological basis to their Integral Theory are really laudable. However, they do not seem to have sufficiently reflected the intense debates surrounding especially justification or validation. According to them in spite of development in securing epistemological justification no complete answer has been found out. Moreover, the type of communal validation is scarcely seen at least among the viable alternatives the philosophers are seeking. Thus somethinginternal or externally related to truth that would eliminate or minimize the possibility of falsehood needs to be added to the validative component. If a balance is recovered among spirituality, science, and philosophy in this way, it would be of a great benefit to respective discipline. (shrink)

According to the age-of-acquisition hypothesis, words acquired early in life are processed faster and more accurately than words acquired later. Connectionist models have begun to explore the influence of the age/order of acquisition of items (and also their frequency of encounter). This study attempts to reconcile two different methodological and theoretical approaches (proposed by Lambon Ralph & Ehsan, 2006 and Zevin & Seidenberg, 2002) to age-limited learning effects. The current simulations extend the findings reported by Zevin and Seidenberg (...) (2002) that have shown that frequency trajectories (FTs) have limited and specific effects on word-reading tasks. Using the methodological framework proposed by Lambon Ralph and Ehsan (2006), which makes it possible to compare word-reading and picture-naming tasks in connectionist networks, we were able to show that FT has a considerable influence on age-limited learning effects in a picture naming task. The findings show that when the input–output mappings are arbitrary (simulating picture naming tasks), the links formed by the network become entrenched as a result of early experience and that subsequent variations in frequency of exposure of the items have only a minor impact. In contrast, when the mappings between input-output are quasi-systematic or systematic (simulating word-reading tasks), the training of new items was generalized and resulted in the suppression of age-limited learning effects. At a theoretical level, we suggest that FT, which simultaneously takes account of time and the level of exposure across time, represents a more precise and modulated measure compared with the order of introduction of the items and may lead to innovative hypotheses in the field of age-limited learning effects. (shrink)

We analyze expressive small clauses like you fool (and their counterparts in other languages) as contributors of expressive content. Independently known restrictions on expressive content in turn allow us to derive their limited distribution. The theory has ramifications for child language. It correctly predicts which root-level small clauses will survive into adult grammar and which will be blocked by the acquisition of higher functional projections. It also opens the way to an analysis of children’s one- and two-word utterances as (...) denoting expressive, rather than straightforwardly propositional, content. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to discuss the nature of nonconceptual, as opposed to conceptual, states and their content, by exploring the suggestion that the distinction between the conceptual and the nonconceptual be mapped onto the distinction between the linguistic and the nonlinguistic. This approach gives special relevance to our intuitions about the cognitive relationship between small children and adults, especially regarding the acquisition of concepts, in the course of normal cognitive development. Assuming that there is a developmental (...) challenge to be met, the paper considers both the conceptualist and nonconceptualist strategies used to meet it; and concludes that conceptualism is a more satisfying option. (shrink)

I like Cowan's review of STM properties and especially his suggestions on the role of attention. I missed, however, a consideration of studies which provide evidence for STM properties in animals. In my commentary, I argue that such evidence can elucidate the biological basis of storage limitations, validating this view by discussing mechanisms which constrain the acquisition of serial information in songbirds.

This paper argues that moral particularism, defined as the view that moral judgment does not require moral principles, depends upon a constricted and untenable view of rational judgment as simple syllogistic ratiocination. This I demonstrate by re-examining Nussbaum’s (1986/2002) case for particularism based on Sophocles’ Antigone. The central role of principles in moral judgment and in educational theory is supported by explicating ‘mature judgment’, which highlights key features of Thomas Green’s account of norm acquisition and of Kant’s account of (...) the autonomy of rational judgment. (shrink)

Previous research has investigated the links between Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) and the monetary magnitude of executive compensation, but failed to inquire how the adoption of specific attributes of compensation contacts relates to M&A activities. We address this gap in the literature by examining the impacts of some M&A characteristics and acquirers' features on the adoption of executive compensation protection provisions and new Long-Term Incentive Plans (LTIPs). The study adopts a longitudinal design before after M&A deals for 80 Canadian acquiring (...) companies that engaged in M&A activities between 1995 and 2001. Our findings suggest that both transactional and organisational characteristics significantly explain the executive compensation arrangements' adoption around M&A transactions, but that the adoption of new LTIPs is subjected to a different set of determinants than the adoption of compensation protection provisions. We interpret these results in the light of the agency, political and institutional perspectives. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore job performance, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from an ethical perceptive. A great number of studies have extensively discussed the link between M&A and performance; however, most focused on the financial functions and strategy selections. Although ethical issues emerge in the M&A process, it is a less studied area. This study adopted the structural equation modeling approach to empirically test our hypotheses. Based on 264 samples from financial companies, data analyses indicated that ethical (...) conduct in M&A is significantly correlated with employee job performance. Ensuring employment security and caring practices can significantly explain organizational commitment. Organizational commitment also plays a significant mediating role between a company’s ethical conduct and employee job performance. Managerial implications are also provided. (shrink)

The idea that people can entertain propositions without believing them is widespread, intuitive, and most probably false. The main goal of this essay is to argue against the claim that people can entertain a proposition without believing it. Evidence is presented demonstrating that we cannot withhold assent from any proposition we happen to consider. A model of belief fixation is then sketched and used to explain hitherto disparate, recalcitrant, and somewhat mysterious psychological phenomena. The proposed model is one where beliefs (...) are the automatic output of a computationally null belief acquisition reflex. In short, the model holds that the mere tokening of a mentally represented truth apt proposition leads to immediately believing it. The essay concludes by considering some consequences that the proposed model of belief acquisition has for our concept of rationality. (shrink)

G.A. Cohen was perhaps libertarianism’s most formidable critic. In Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality he levels several strong criticisms against Robert Nozick’s theory put forth in Anarchy, State, and Utopia. In this paper, I counter several of Cohen’s criticisms. The debate operates at three stages: (1) self-ownership, (2) world-ownership, and (3) initial [...].

In his recent book, Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, Jerry Fodor retracts the radical concept-nativism he once defended. Yet that postion stood, virtually unchallenged, for more than twenty years. This neglect is puzzling, as Fodor's arguments against concepts being learnable from experience remain unanswered, and nativism has historically been taken very seriously as a response to empiricism's perceived shortcomings. In this paper, I urge that Fodorean nativism should indeed be rejected. I argue, however, that its deficiencies are not so (...) obvious that they can simply be taken for granted. Fodor can counter extant objections by stressing two distinctions: between historicist and counterfactual semantic theories and between explaining reference and explaining concept-acquisition. But, I argue, this victory is pyrrhic. Reformulated as objections to his account qua theory of concept-acquisition, and not qua theory of reference, analogous difficulties are fatal to the Fodorean position. (shrink)

First I should clarify my thesis. When I say the mind starts off as a blank slate, I’m saying that it’s devoid of substantive concepts or ideas, that is non-logical concepts or ideas. Some examples of substantive concepts are: the concept of a cat, the concept of a quark, the concept of being square, and the concept of heaviness.

Depending on how one looks at it, we have been enjoying or suffering a significant empirical turn in moral psychology during this first decade of the 21st century. While philosophers have, from time to time, considered empirical matters with respect to morality, those who took an interest in actual (rather than ideal) moral agents were primarily concerned with whether particular moral theories were ‘too demanding’ for creatures like us (Flanagan, 1991; Williams, 1976; Wolf, 1982). Faithful adherence to Utilitarianism or Kantianism (...) would appear to be inconsistent with other things we value, like personal integrity and flourishing, which depend upon pursuing individually determined projects and ways of life in rather single-minded ways. Maximizing the good is a full-time job, and the impartiality recommended by Kantian theory can get in the way of showing special care for those we know and love. All this is standard philosophical fare. However, more recently, philosophers and psychologists have begun to treat moral psychology as a legitimate branch of cognitive science. They inquire into the evolution of morality (e.g., Joyce, 2007; Nichols 2004), debate the human uniqueness of moral capacities (e.g., deWaal, 2006; Hauser, 2006), investigate the causal etiology of moral judgments (e.g., Haidt & Greene, 2002; Hauser et al., 2006; Prinz, 2006), attempt to map the neuroanatomy of moral reasoning (e.g., Greene et al., 2001; Greene et al., 2004; Moll, et al., 2005), and consider what other affective and cognitive capacities are required by a creature who sees the world in moral terms. (See also Sinnott-Armstrong, 2007, 2008a, 2008b). 1 In this essay, I discuss two issues whose interdependence and central importance for empirically informed moral psychology have not been fully grasped, or so I believe. First is what I call the Explananda Challenge. Let us assume that the primary question for moral psychology is this: How is it possible for human beings to be moral creatures? Deceptively simple, this question obscures a number of rather more difficult ones.. (shrink)

Languages encode motion in strikingly different ways. Languages such as English communicate the manner of motion through verbs (e.g., roll, pop), while languages such as Greek often lexicalize the path of motion in verbs (e.g., ascend, pass). In a set of studies with English- and Greek-speaking adults and 5-year-olds, we ask how such lexical constraints are combined with structural cues in hypothesizing meanings for novel motion verbs. We show that lexicalization biases generate different interpretations of novel motion verbs across ages (...) and languages; furthermore, they generalize to the domain of caused motion. Crucially, these language-specific effects interact with universal mappings between syntactic structure and semantic content, and these interactions are respected by both adults and young children. (shrink)

Do children acquire language rapidly, or slowly? From the vantage point of linguistic theory, all normal children could be expected to have full command of a rich and intricate system of linguistic principles in just a few years. Experimental studies of child language, however, paint a different picture of language development: It appears that language learning extends over many years, with children making numerous missteps along the way. Attempts have been made to reconcile theory and data, by looking for features (...) of language development that might impede the emergence of linguistic knowledge, and by looking in more detail at the experimental findings themselves. We begin by reviewing the reasons, based on current linguistic theory, for anticipating the rapid growth of linguistic knowledge in children. Then we turn to the laboratory, to consider both findings that do not sit well with the expectations of linguistic theory, as well as ones that comport well with theory. (shrink)

One of the more important and under-thematized philosophical disputes in contemporary European philosophy pertains to the significance that is given to the inter-related phenomena of habituality, skilful coping, and learning. This paper examines this dispute by focusing on the work of the Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger-inspired phenomenologist Hubert Dreyfus, and contrasting his analyses with those of Gilles Deleuze, particularly in Difference and Repetition. Both Deleuze and Dreyfus pay a lot of attention to learning and coping, while arriving at distinct conclusions about (...) these phenomena with a quite different ethico-political force. By getting to the bottom of the former, my hope is to problematize aspects of the latter in both philosophers' work. In Deleuze's case, it will be argued that he adopts a problematic position on learning that is aptly termed 'empirico-romanticism'. While I will agree with the general thrust of Dreyfus' foregrounding of habit and skilful coping, even in the political realm, it will also be argued that there are some risks associated with his view, notably of devolving into a conservative communitarianism. (shrink)

This paper explores the interaction between implicit and explicit processes during skill learning, in terms of top-down learning (that is, learning that goes from explicit to implicit knowledge) versus bottom-up learning (that is, learning that goes from implicit to explicit knowledge). Instead of studying each type of knowledge (implicit or explicit) in isolation, we stress the interaction between the two types, especially in terms of one type giving rise to the other, and its effects on learning. The work presents an (...) integrated model of skill learning that takes into account both implicit and explicit processes and both top-down and bottom-up learning. We examine and simulate human data in the Tower of Hanoi task. The paper shows how the quantitative data in this task may be captured using either top-down or bottom-up approaches, although top-down learning is a more apt explanation of the human data currently available. These results illustrate the two different directions of learning (top-down versus bottom-up), and thereby provide a new perspective on skill learning. Ó 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The set of English modal verbs is widely recognized to communicate two broad clusters of meanings: epistemic and root modal meanings. A number of researchers have claimed that root meanings are acquired earlier than epistemic ones; this claim has subsequently been employed in the linguistics literature as an argument for the position that English modal verbs are polysemous (Sweetser, 1990). In this paper I offer an alternative explanation for the later emergence of epistemic interpretations by linking them to the development (...) of the child’s theory of mind (Wellman, 1990); if correct, this hypothesis might have important implications for the shape of the semantics of modal verbs. (shrink)

A chief aim of this paper is to provide common ground for discussion of outstanding issues between defenders of classical logic and contemporary advocates of intuitionistic logic. In this spirit, I draw upon (and reconstruct) here the relationship between dialogue and evidence as emphasized in German constructivist authors. My approach depends upon developments in the methodology of empirical linguistics. As a preliminary to saying how one might decide between these two versions of logic (this issue is most closely approached in (...) Section V. discussing the constructivist approach), it is well worth the effort to look closely at how logic is (or might be) learned and at questions concerning logic in translation, i.e., the question of how we might detect the variety of logic actually employed in a given speech community. (shrink)

Language acquisition is often said to be a process of mapping words into pre-existing concepts. Some researchers regard this theory as an immediate corollary of the assumption that all problem-solving involves the application of concepts. But in light of basic philosophical objections to the theory of language acquisition, that kind of rationale cannot be very persuasive. To have a reason to accept the theory of language acquisition despite the philosophical objections, we ought to have experimental evidence for (...) the existence of concepts in prelinguistic children. One of the few lines of research that attempts to provide such evidence is the work of Paul Quinn, who claims that looking-time results show that four-month old infants form "category representations". This paper argues that Quinn's results have an alternative explanation. A distinction is drawn between conceptual thought and the perception of comparative similarity relations, and it is argued that Quinn's results can be explained in terms of the latter rather than the former. (shrink)

This paper investigates young children's knowledge of scalar implicatures and downward entailment. In previous experimental work, we have shown that young children access the full range of truth-conditions associated with logical words in classical logic, including the disjunction operator, as well as the indefinite article. The present study extends this research in three ways, taking disjunction as a case study. Experiment 1 draws upon the observation that scalar implicatures (SIs) are cancelled (or reversed) in downward entailing (DE) linguistic environments, e.g., (...) in the scope of negation (Chierchia, 2000). Experiment 2 was designed to determine if scalar implicatures are used by children, like adults, to influence the interpretation of disjunction in non-DE contexts, yielding an implicature of exclusivity for disjunction. Whereas adult controls always rejected assertions of the form A or B in positive (non-DE) contexts in which assertions of the form A and B were also true, many children accepted assertions with disjunction in such contexts. To provide an interpretation to the findings from Experiment 2, a new experimental technique was devised and used in Experiment 3. The new technique presents pairs of assertions to children, who are asked to judge which assertion is a ‘better’ description of the context. The findings from Experiment 3 demonstrated children's awareness that A and B is more informative than A or B in positive contexts, where both statements are true. Taken together, the findings of Experiments 2 and 3 are compatible with the view that some children lack the computational resources to apply scalar implicatures when a single assertion is presented alone (see Reinhart, 1999). (shrink)