This paper proposes an Interface Transparency Thesis concerning how linguistic meanings are related to the cognitive systems that are used to evaluate sentences for truth/falsity: a declarative sentence S is semantically associated with a canonical procedure for determining whether S is true; while this procedure need not be used as a verification strategy, competent speakers are biased towards strategies that directly reflect canonical specifications of truth conditions. Evidence in favor of this hypothesis comes from a psycholinguistic experiment examining adult judgments (...) concerning ‘Most of the dots are blue’. This sentence is true if and only if the number of blue dots exceeds the number of nonblue dots. But this leaves unsettled, e.g., how the second cardinality is specified for purposes of understanding and/or verification: via the nonblue things, given a restriction to the dots, as in ‘|{x: Dot(x) & ~Blue(x)}|’; via the blue things, given the same restriction, and subtraction from the number of dots, as in ‘|{x: Dot(x)}| – |{x: Dot(x) & Blue(x)}|’; or in some other way. Psycholinguistic evidence and psychophysical modeling support the second hypothesis. (shrink)

Lidz also ponders the theory of syntactic bootstrapping by asking why it is that learners are considered to retain little of extralinguistic environments (i.e., their observations) during word learning, while being able to retain detailed representations of linguistic context, for example, the multiple syntactic frames in which a verb appears. Lidz argues that learners value syntactic information over extralinguistic context from the beginning of learning, consistent with syntactic bootstrapping as a key device for verb learning.

The meaning of 'most' can be described in many ways. We offer a framework for distinguishing semantic descriptions, interpreted as psychological hypotheses that go beyond claims about sentential truth conditions, and an experiment that tells against an attractive idea: 'most' is understood in terms of one-to-one correspondence. Adults evaluated 'Most of the dots are yellow', as true or false, on many trials in which yellow dots and blue dots were displayed for 200 ms. Displays manipulated the ease of using a (...) 'one-to-one with remainder' strategy, and a strategy of using the Approximate Number System to compare of (approximations of) cardinalities. Interpreting such data requires care in thinking about how meaning is related to verification. But the results suggest that 'most' is understood in terms of cardinality comparison, even when counting is impossible. (shrink)

Quantifiers are a test case for an interface between psychological questions, which attempt to specify the numerical content that supports the semantics of quantifiers, and linguistic questions, which uncover the range of possible quantifier meanings allowable within the constraints of the syntax. Here we explore the development of comprehension of most in English, of particular interest as it calls on precise numerical content that, in adults, requires an understanding of large exact numerosities (e.g., 23 blue dots and 17 yellow is (...) an instance of “most of the dots are blue”). In a sample of 100 children 2 to 5 years of age we find that (a) successful most comprehension in cases with two salient subsets is achieved at 3 years, 7 months of age, and (b) most comprehension is independent of knowledge of large exact number words; that is, knowledge of large exact number words is neither necessary, as evidenced by children who understand “most” but not “four,” nor sufficient, as evidenced by children who understand “nine” but not “most.”. (shrink)

How do children learn the meanings of propositional attitude verbs? We argue that children use information contained in both syntactic distribution and pragmatic function to zero in on the appropriate meanings. Specifically, we identify a potentially universal link between semantic subclasses of attitude verbs, their syntactic distribution and the kinds of indirect speech acts they can be used to perform. As a result, children can use the syntax as evidence about the meaning, which in turn constrains the kinds of pragmatic (...) enrichments they do and do not make in understanding these verbs in conversation. (shrink)

The conceptual building blocks suggested by developmental psychologists may yet play a role in how the human learner arrives at an understanding of natural number. The proposal of Rips et al. faces a challenge, yet to be met, faced by all developmental proposals: to describe the logical space in which learners ever acquire new concepts.

Kotek et al. argue on the basis of novel experimental evidence that sentences like ‘Most of the dots are blue’ are ambiguous, i.e. have two distinct truth conditions. Kotek et al. furthermore suggest that when their results are taken together with those of earlier work by Lidz et al., the overall picture that emerges casts doubt on the conclusions that Lidz et al. drew from their earlier results. We disagree with this characterization of the relationship between the two (...) studies. Our main aim in this reply is to clarify the relationship as we see it. In our view, Kotek et al.’s central claims are simply logically independent of those of Lidz et al.: the former concern which truth condition a certain kind of sentence has, while the latter concern the procedures that speakers choose for the purposes of determining whether a particular truth condition is satisfied in various scenes. The appearance of a conflict between the two studies stems from inattention to the distinction between questions about truth conditions and questions about verification procedures. (shrink)

A sentence like every circle is blue might be understood in terms of individuals and their properties or in terms of a relation between groups. Relatedly, theorists can specify the contents of universally quantified sentences in first-order or second-order terms. We offer new evidence that this logical first-order vs. second-order distinction corresponds to a psychologically robust individual vs. group distinction that has behavioral repercussions. Participants were shown displays of dots and asked to evaluate sentences with each, every, or all combined (...) with a predicate. We find that participants are better at estimating how many things the predicate applied to after evaluating sentences in which universal quantification is indicated with every or all, as opposed to each. We argue that every and all are understood in second-order terms that encourage group representation, while each is understood in first-order terms that encourage individual representation. Since the sentences that participants evaluate are truth-conditionally equivalent, our results also bear on questions concerning how meanings are related to truth-conditions. (shrink)

Propositional attitude verbs, such as think and want, have long held interest for both theoretical linguists and language acquisitionists because their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties display complex interactions that have proven difficult to fully capture from either perspective. This paper explores the granularity with which these verbs’ semantic and pragmatic properties are recoverable from their syntactic distributions, using three behavioral experiments aimed at explicitly quantifying the relationship between these two sets of properties. Experiment 1 gathers a measure of 30 (...) propositional attitude verbs’ syntactic distributions using an acceptability judgment task. Experiments 2a and 2b gather measures of semantic similarity between those same verbs using a generalized semantic discrimination task and an ordinal scale task, respectively. Two kinds of analyses are conducted on the data from these experiments. The first compares both the acceptability judgments and the semantic similarity judgments to previous classifications derived from the syntax and semantics literature. The second kind compares the acceptability judgments to the semantic similarity judgments directly. Through these comparisons, we show that there is quite fine-grained information about propositional attitude verbs’ semantics carried in their syntactic distributions—whether one considers the sorts of discrete qualitative classifications that linguists traditionally work with or the sorts of continuous quantitative classifications that can be derived experimentally. (shrink)

Children acquiring languages with noun classes have ample statistical information available that characterizes the distribution of nouns into these classes, but their use of this information to classify novel nouns differs from the predictions made by an optimal Bayesian classifier. We use rational analysis to investigate the hypothesis that children are classifying nouns optimally with respect to a distribution that does not match the surface distribution of statistical features in their input. We propose three ways in which children's apparent statistical (...) insensitivity might arise, and find that all three provide ways to account for the difference between children's behavior and the optimal classifier. A fourth model combines two of these proposals and finds that children's insensitivity is best modeled as a bias to ignore certain features during classification, rather than an inability to encode those features during learning. These results provide insight into children's developing knowledge of noun classes and highlight the complex ways in which statistical information from the input interacts with children's learning processes. (shrink)

Quantificational determiners are often said to be devices for expressing relations. For example, the meaning of _every_ is standardly described as the inclusion relation, with a sentence like _every frog is green_ meaning roughly that the green things include the frogs. Here, we consider an older, non-relational alternative: determiners are tools for creating restricted quantifiers. On this view, determiners specify how many elements of a restricted domain (e.g., the frogs) satisfy a given condition (e.g., being green). One important difference concerns (...) how the determiner treats its two grammatical arguments. On the relational view, the arguments are on a logical par as independent terms that specify the two relata. But on the restricted view, the arguments play distinct logical roles: specifying the limited domain versus supplying an additional condition on domain entities. We present psycholinguistic evidence suggesting that the restricted view better describes what speakers know when they know the meaning of a determiner. In particular, we find that when asked to evaluate sentences of the form _every F is G_, participants mentally group the Fs but not the Gs. Moreover, participants forego representing the group defined by the intersection of F and G. This tells against the idea that speakers understand _every F is G_ as implying that the Fs bear relation (e.g., inclusion) to a second group. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 1, January 2022.

Abstract:Therapeutic misconception (TM)—when clinical research participants fail to adequately grasp the difference between participating in a clinical trial and receiving ordinary clinical care—has long been recognized as a significant problem in consent to clinical trials. We suggest that TM does not primarily reflect inadequate disclosure or participants’ incompetence. Instead, TM arises from divergent primary cognitive frames. The researchers’ frame places the clinical trial in the context of scientific designs for assessing intervention efficacy. In contrast, most participants have a cognitive frame (...) that is personal and focused primarily on their medical problems. To illustrate this, we draw on interview material from both clinical researchers and participants in clinical trials. We suggest that reducing TM requires encouraging subjects to adjust their frame, not just add information to their existing frame. What is necessary is ascientific reframingof participation in a clinical trial. (shrink)

This third paper locates the synthetic neurorobotics research reviewed in the second paper in terms of themes introduced in the first paper. It begins with biological non-reductionism as understood by Searle. It emphasizes the role of synthetic neurorobotics studies in accessing the dynamic structure essential to consciousness with a focus on system criticality and self, develops a distinction between simulated and formal consciousness based on this emphasis, reviews Tani and colleagues' work in light of this distinction, and ends by forecasting (...) the increasing importance of synthetic neurorobotics studies for cognitive science and philosophy of mind going forward, finally in regards to most- and myth-consciousness. (shrink)

Direct neurological and especially imaging-driven investigations into the structures essential to naturally occurring cognitive systems in their development and operation have motivated broadening interest in the potential for artificial consciousness modeled on these systems. This first paper in a series of three begins with a brief review of Boltuc’s (2009) “brain-based” thesis on the prospect of artificial consciousness, focusing on his formulation of h-consciousness. We then explore some of the implications of brain research on the structure of consciousness, finding limitations (...) in biological approaches to the study of consciousness. Looking past these limitations, we introduce research in artificial consciousness designed to test for the emergence of consciousness, a phenomenon beyond the purview of the study of existing biological systems. (shrink)

The present paper shows how one might model Everettian quantum mechanics using hyperfinitely many worlds. A hyperfinite model allows one to consider idealized measurements of observables with continuous-valued spectra where different outcomes are associated with possibly infinitesimal probabilities. One can also prove hyperfinite formulations of Everett’s limiting relative-frequency and randomness properties, theorems he considered central to his formulation of quantum mechanics. Finally, this model provides an intuitive framework in which to consider no-collapse formulations of quantum mechanics more generally.

The concepts of sustainable agriculture, organic agriculture, regenerative agriculture, and alternative agriculture are receiving increasing attention in the academic and popular literature on present trends and future directions of agriculture. Whatever the reasons for this interest, there nevertheless remain differences of opinion concerning what counts as a sustainable agriculture. One of the reasons for these differences is that the moral underpinnings of a policy of sustainability are not clear. By understanding the moral obligatoriness of sustainability, we can come to understand (...) precisely what must be sustained, and by implication, how. This article discusses the arguments that can be advanced for sustaining anything and initially concludes that our obligations to future generations entail sustaining more than just sufficient food production or an adequate resource base. Indeed, a tradition of care and community must underlie whatever agricultural and resource strategies we are to develop under the rubric of sustainability. A consideration of the larger social and environmental system in which agriculture operates and the constraints this system places on agriculture forces us to recognize that sustainability has to do with larger institutional issues, including our ability to incorporate our common morality democratically into our institutions, practices, and technologies. (shrink)

I will begin by considering how the social world appears to the scientific observer and ask the question of whether the world of scientific research, with all its categories of meaning interpretation and with all its conceptual schemes of action, is identical with the world in which the observed actor acts. Anticipating the result, I may state immediately that with the shift from one level to the other, all the conceptual schemes and all the terms of interpretation must be modified.Proceeding (...) in this direction, I encounter several problems overlapping with the problem of rational action and the “rational act unit” in Professor ParsonsParsons, Talcott’ sense. First: The conceptual scheme of rational action presupposes a more or less definite knowledge of, or orientation within, the world in which this action is performed. In this sense the term, “rationality”, is not specific to the conceptual scheme of action; it embraces the conceptual scheme of the world in general and is only one element in it. Therefore, we also must examine the problem of orientation in this world. Second: We ought to keep in mind that all interpretation of the social world has to start from the actor’s subjective point of view. Therefore, we cannot accept the term, “unit act”, as such, without trying to reduce it to its subjective meaning. Here I have to discuss in general terms why I insist on the subjective point of view. This is more than the whim of a few social scientists; social science cannot be built up except by taking cognizance of the subjective meaning the actor connects with his acting. Finally, I have to discuss the fact that there are social sciences operating on high theoretical levels that, like economics, apparently prefer to deal with statistical curves and mathematical formulae rather than with actions of human beings in the social world, yet they use the term, “rational action”, as an indispensable element of their systems. I will have to show what modification this term undergoes in these types of social sciences..). (shrink)

Wattles offers a comprehensive survey of the history of the golden rule, "Do unto others as you want others to do unto you". He traces the rule's history in contexts as diverse as the writings of Confucius and the Greek philosophers, the Bible, modern theology and philosophy, and the American "self-help" context. He concludes by offering his own synthesis of these varied understandings.

Structural realism has been proposed as an epistemological position interpolating between realism and sceptical anti-realism about scientific theories. The structural realist who accepts a scientific theory thinks that is empirically correct, and furthermore is a realist about the ‘structural content’ of . But what exactly is ‘structural content’? One proposal is that the ‘structural content’ of a scientific theory may be associated with its Ramsey sentence (). However, Demopoulos and Friedman have argued, using ideas drawn from Newman's earlier criticism of (...) Russell's structuralism, that this move fails to achieve an interesting intermediate position between realism and anti-realism. Rather, () adds little content beyond the instrumentalistically acceptable claim that the theory is empirically adequate. Here, I formulate carefully the crucial claim of Demopoulos and Friedman, and show that the Ramsey sentence () is true just in case possesses a full model which is empirically correct and satisfies a certain cardinality condition on its theoretical domain. This suggests that structural realism is not a position significantly different from the anti-realism it attempts to distinguish itself from. Introduction Technical framework Ramsification Empirical adequacy Ramsification empirical adequacy + cardinality constraint Conclusion. (shrink)

A model of the neuropsychology of anxiety is proposed. The model is based in the first instance upon an analysis of the behavioural effects of the antianxiety drugs in animals. From such psychopharmacologi-cal experiments the concept of a “behavioural inhibition system” has been developed. This system responds to novel stimuli or to those associated with punishment or nonreward by inhibiting ongoing behaviour and increasing arousal and attention to the environment. It is activity in the BIS that constitutes anxiety and that (...) is reduced by antianxiety drugs. The effects of the antianxiety drugs in the brain also suggest hypotheses concerning the neural substrate of anxiety. Although the benzodiazepines and barbiturates facilitate the effects of γ-aminobutyrate, this is insufficient to explain their highly specific behavioural effects. Because of similarities between the behavioural effects of certain lesions and those of the antianxiety drugs, it is proposed that these drugs reduce anxiety by impairing the functioning of a widespread neural system including the septo-hippocampal system, the Papez circuit, the prefrontal cortex, and ascending monoaminergic and cholinergic pathways which innervate these forebrain structures. Analysis of the functions of this system suggests that it acts as a comparator: it compares predicted to actual sensory events and activates the outputs of the BIS when there is a mismatch or when the predicted event is aversive. Suggestions are made as to the functions of particular pathways within this overall brain system. The resulting theory is applied to the symptoms and treatment of anxiety in man, its relations to depression, and the personality of individuals who are susceptible to anxiety or depression. (shrink)

In order to understand ongoing activity, observers segment it into meaningful temporal parts. Segmentation can be based on bottom‐up processing of distinctive sensory characteristics, such as movement features. Segmentation may also be affected by top‐down effects of knowledge structures, including information about actors' intentions. Three experiments investigated the role of movement features and intentions in perceptual event segmentation, using simple animations. In all conditions, movement features significantly predicted where participants segmented. This relationship was stronger when participants identified larger units than (...) when they identified smaller units, and stronger when the animations were generated randomly than when they were generated by goal‐directed human activity. This pattern suggests that bottom‐up processing played an important role in segmentation of these stimuli, but that this was modulated by top‐down influence of knowledge structures. To describe accurately how observers perceive ongoing activity, one must account for the effects of distinctive sensory characteristics, the effects of knowledge structures, and their interactions. (shrink)

A simple tool is provided to assist researchers in assessing contributions to a scientific publication, for ease in evaluating which contributors qualify for authorship, and in what order the authors should be listed. The tool identifies four phases of activity leading to a publication—Conception and Design, Data Acquisition, Analysis and Interpretation, and Manuscript Preparation. By comparing a project participant’s contribution in a given phase to several specified thresholds, a score of up to five points can be assigned; the contributor’s scores (...) in all four phases are summed to yield a total “contribution score”, which is compared to a threshold to determine which contributors merit authorship. This tool may be useful in a variety of contexts in which a systematic approach to authorial credit is desired. (shrink)

argues that ancient Greek medicine had a significant effect on the way in which Plato conceived of ethics, and (2) explores some ways in which Plato integrated medical concepts such as "health" into his ethics. Specific parallels between ancient medicine and such concepts as eudaimonia , soul, nature and convention, etc., are discussed, as is the relation between conceptions of health and medical treatment. Keywords: ancient medicine, ethics, health, Plato CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

I begin by defending Heinrich Gustav Hotho’s foundational edition of the Lectures on Aesthetics (LA) contra Gethmann-Siebert and others who argue for a non-systematic view of Hegel’s aesthetics generally and music specifically. I defend Hegel against the common conceit that his comprehension of music was somehow deficient and introduce the Hegelian idea of absolute agency as performative in art and music. Reference to Kant’s transcendental aesthetics then allows us to grasp how, in Hegel, meaningful tones arise from the vibratory oscillation (...) between selfhood’s presiding unity and its temporal self-positing. I then trace back further elements of musical architecture, such as rhythm, harmony and melody to the temporal oscillation arising from within selfhood. The fundamental ambiguity within temporal oscillation is the source of meaningfulness in music, the feeling that its experience is meaningful without telling us exactly what that meaning is. Meaningfulness forms the absolute Ur-Ton of beautiful music, which arises as determinate tones within selfhood and resonates into the soul of the listener. The temporal vanishing of musical tones within a compositional framework is a pre-linguistic expression of meaning, performative of the ambiguous oscillation between the human and the divine. (shrink)

Institutional review boards are almost universally considered to be overworked and understaffed. They also require substantial commitments of time and resources from their members. Although some surveys report average IRB memberships of 15 people or more, federal regulations require only five. We present data on IRB meetings at eight of the top 25 academic medical centers in the United States funded by the National Institutes of Health. These data indicate substantial contributions from primary reviewers and chairs during protocol discussions but (...) little from other members, which implies that it may be possible for smaller IRBs to accomplish the same tasks with no reduction in the quality of review. (shrink)

I‘m a materialist, and not too embarassed about it. It would be nice to have a knock down argument to defend materialism, but not having one, I instinctively fight off idealists, dualists, skeptics, or whatever, with the same punches and feints used by materialists from time immemorial. Like, say, the snide observation that a material like liquor gets even my idealist friends drunk, or that the senile dualists I have known don't seem at all to consist of ageless minds trapped (...) in aging bodies. I will not resort to ad baculum, because all non-materialists I‘ve known, of whatever stripe, act as though tampering with their bodies is the same as tampering with their very selves. (shrink)

Followers of Wittgenstein allegedly once held that a meaningful claim to know that p could only be made if there was some doubt about the truth of p. The correct response to this thesis involved appealing to the distinction between the semantic content of a sentence and features attaching to its use. It is inappropriate to assert a knowledge-claim unless someone in the audience has doubt about what the speaker claims to know. But this fact has nothing to do with (...) the semantic content of knowledgeascriptions; it is entirely explicable by appeal to pragmatic facts about felicitous assertion. (shrink)