Evolutionary psychologists have suggested that confidence and conservatism promoted aggression in our ancestral past, and that this may have been an adaptive strategy given the prevailing costs and benefits of conflict. However, in modern environments, where the costs and benefits of conflict can be very different owing to the involvement of mass armies, sophisticated technology, and remote leadership, evolved tendencies toward high levels of confidence and conservatism may continue to be a contributory cause of aggression despite leading to greater costs (...) and fewer benefits. The purpose of this paper is to test whether confidence and conservatism are indeed associated with greater levels of aggression—in an explicitly political domain. We present the results of an experiment examining people’s levels of aggression in response to hypothetical international crises (a hostage crisis, a counter-insurgency campaign, and a coup). Levels of aggression (which range from concession to negotiation to military attack) were significantly predicted by subjects’ (1) confidence that their chosen policy would succeed, (2) score on a liberal-conservative scale, (3) political party affiliation, and (4) preference for the use of military force in real-world U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran. We discuss the possible adaptive and maladaptive implications of confidence and conservatism for the prospects of war and peace in the modern world. (shrink)

I take up the challenge of whyfalsebeliefs are better than “cautious actionpolicies” (target article, sect. 9) in navigating adaptive problems with asymmetric errors. I then suggest that there areinteractionsbetween supernatural beliefs, self-deception, and positive illusions, rendering elements of all such misbeliefs adaptive. Finally, I argue that supernatural beliefs cannot be rejected as adaptive simply because recent experiments are inconclusive. The great costs of religion betray its even greater adaptive benefits – we just have not yet nailed down exactly what they (...) are. (shrink)

Human aggression has two important dimensions: within-group aggression and between-group aggression. Archer offers an excellent treatment of the former only. A full explanation of sex differences in aggression will fail without accounting for our history of inter-group aggression, which has deep evolutionary roots and specific psychological adaptations. The causes and consequences of inter-group aggression are dramatically different for males and females.

We study the notion of dp-minimality, beginning by providing several essential facts about dp-minimality, establishing several equivalent definitions for dp-minimality, and comparing dp-minimality to other minimality notions. The majority of the rest of the paper is dedicated to examples. We establish via a simple proof that any weakly o-minimal theory is dp-minimal and then give an example of a weakly o-minimal group not obtained by adding traces of externally definable sets. Next we give an example of a divisible ordered Abelian (...) group which is dp-minimal and not weakly o-minimal. Finally we establish that the field of p -adic numbers is dp-minimal. (shrink)

We prove that NIP valued fields of positive characteristic are henselian, and we begin to generalize the known results on dp-minimal fields to dp-finite fields. On any unstable dp-finite field K, we define a type-definable group of “infinitesimals,” corresponding to a canonical group topology on (K, +). We reduce the classification of positive characteristic dp-finite fields to the construction of non-trivial Aut(K/A)-invariant valuation rings.

We prove that in $\operatorname {NTP}_{\operatorname {2}}$ theories the dp-rank of a type can be witnessed by indiscernible sequences of tuples satisfying that type. If the type has dp-rank infinity, then this can be witnessed by singletons.

An equation to compute the dp-rank of any abelian group is given. It is also shown that its dp-rank, or more generally that of any one-based group, agrees with its Vapnik–Chervonenkis density. Furthermore, strong abelian groups are characterised to be precisely those abelian groups A such that there are only finitely many primes p such that the group A / pA is infinite and for every prime p, there are only finitely many natural numbers n such that $\left[p]/\left[p]$ is infinite.Finally, (...) it is shown that an infinite stable field of finite dp-rank is algebraically closed. (shrink)

This paper has two parts. In the first one, we prove that an invariant dp-minimal type is either finitely satisfiable or definable. We also prove that a definable version of the -theorem holds in dp-minimal theories of small or medium directionality.In the second part, we study dp-rank in dp-minimal theories and show that it enjoys many nice properties. It is continuous, definable in families and it can be characterised geometrically with no mention of indiscernible sequences. In particular, if the structure (...) expands a divisible ordered abelian group, then dp-rank coincides with the dimension coming from the order. (shrink)

We study dp-minimal and strongly dependent theories and investigate connections between these notions and weight.

We show basic facts about dp-minimal ordered structures. The main results are: dp-minimal groups are abelian-by-finite-exponent, in a divisible ordered dp-minimal group, any infinite set has non-empty interior, and any theory of pure tree is dp-minimal.

We consider structures of the form (Z;+,C), where C is an additive cyclic order on (Z;+). We show that such structures are dp-minimal and in this way produce a continuum-size family of dp-minimal expansions of (Z;+) such that no two members of the family define the same subsets of Z.

Dp-minimality is a common generalization of weak minimality and weak o-minimality. If T is a weakly o-minimal theory then it is dp-minimal (Fact 2.2), but there are dp-minimal densely ordered groups that are not weakly o-minimal. We introduce the even more general notion of inp-minimality and prove that in an inp-minimal densely ordered group, every definable unary function is a union of finitely many continuous locally monotonic functions (Theorem 3.2).

A theory $T$ is shown to have an ICT pattern of depth $k$ in $n$ variables iff it interprets some $k$ -maximum VC class in $n$ parameters.

We construct a nontrivial definable type V field topology on any dp-minimal field K that is not strongly minimal, and prove that definable subsets of Kn have small boundary. Using this topology and...

In this article, we develop tame topology over dp-minimal structures equipped with definable uniformities satisfying certain assumptions. Our assumptions are enough to ensure that definable sets are tame: there is a good notion of dimension on definable sets, definable functions are almost everywhere continuous, and definable sets are finite unions of graphs of definable continuous “multivalued functions.” This generalizes known statements about weakly o-minimal, C-minimal, and P-minimal theories.

This paper argues that, given a simple [DP VP] sentence, the availability of a collective interpretation crucially depends on the syntactic and semantic properties of the subject DP, specifically the presence versus absence of a pluralizing function that makes the collective interpretation available. In support of my claim, I present Lebanese Arabic and Western Armenian examples in which an indefinite DP contains a cardinal numeral and there is no overt distributivity operator but the interpretation of the sentence is nevertheless obligatorily (...) distributive, regardless of the predicate. I show that neither a distributivity operator within the DP nor one on the predicate can explain this strictly distributive interpretation. Instead, I argue that in order to allow a collective interpretation, an indefinite DP must denote a quantifier over pluralities, a condition that is not always met in numeral-containing indefinite DPs. While the claims in this paper are based primarily on observations from Lebanese Arabic and Western Armenian, because both are morphologically rich languages, the fact that this constraint is operative in these two unrelated languages, in addition to striking similarities to the Russian gender system, suggest that it is an inherent property of DPs crosslinguistically. (shrink)

Cet article discute l’analyse en termes de DP qui domine actuellement dans la grammaire générative chomskienne, à savoir, l’idée que la tête du groupe nominal est le déterminant, plutôt que le nom. Nous commençons par une discussion des notions de tête et de dépendance et passons en revue différents critères classiques permettant de décider quel élément est la tête dans une construction donnée. Sur base de ceux-ci, nous proposons une série d’arguments suggérant que la position classique est en réalité la (...) bonne et que c’est bien le nom qui est la tête du groupe nominal. Nous étudions ensuite une série d’arguments et d’analyses spécifiques qui ont été avancés en faveur de l’analyse en termes de DP et montrons pourquoi nous ne les considérons pas comme convaincants. En conclusion, nous notons que le choix entre les analyses NP et DP n’est peut-être pas une question empiriquement décidable si l’on s’autorise les représentations syntaxiques très abstraites qui sont actuellement en vogue dans le cadre de la linguistique générative chomskienne. (shrink)

DP hypothesis of Abney (1987), the syntactic unit that had formerly been known as noun phrase should in fact be analyzed as a phrase headed by a determiner, hence the label DP. Quite independently of this syntactic development, Partee (1987) proposed a type shifting paradigm for the semantic analysis of nominals (now called DPs). In Partee's proposal DPs are ambiguous between a referential reading of type e, a predicative reading of type et and a quantificational reading of type (et)t. DP (...) meanings can flexibly move between their different readings due to covert application of semantic operators. The present paper proposes some strong relationships between these syntactic and semantic paradigms. It is argued that the structure of the DP affects its semantics in that the NP level within the DP is purely predicative and the DP level itself is purely quantificational. However, the intermediate D' level is flexible between the predicate/quantifier semantic categories, due to the covert application of semantic operators at this level. Partee's assumption, adopted from Discourse Representation Theory and more traditional approaches in philosophical logic, that some DPs need to have a (discourse) referential reading, is withdrawn. Instead of Partee's type shifting operators between the three semantic categories she assumes, two operators are used between predicates and quantifiers. The choice function operation of Reinhart (1997) and Winter (1997) is used as a general operator from predicates to quantifiers. The minimum operator of Winter (1996) is used as a general operator from quantifiers to predicates. These two operations, referred to as category shifting operators , account for most of the Partee data and substantially extend the theory of flexibility to treat some intricate phenomena in the domains of coordination, plurality and scope. (shrink)

We prove in particular that, in a large class of dp-minimal theories including the p-adics, definable types are dense amongst nonforking types.