According to cognitive averaging theory, preferences for attractive faces result from their similarity to facial prototypes, the categorical central tendencies of a population of faces. Prototypical faces are processed more fluently, resulting in increased positive affect in the viewer.

Dichotomous thinking about mental phenomena is abundant in philosophy. One particularly tenacious dichotomy is between “automatic” and “controlled” processes. In this characterization automatic and unintelligent go hand in hand, as do non-automatic and intelligent. Accounts of skillful action have problematized this dichotomous conceptualization and moved towards a more nuanced understanding of human agency. This binary thinking is, however, still abundant in the philosophy of joint action. Habits and skills allow us agentic ways of guiding complex action routines that would otherwise (...) overwhelm our reflective capacities. In this paper, I look at how theories of skill, habit, and know-how in individual action can inform a non-dichotomous account of joint action. I argue that a fuller understanding of joint agency has to understand not only group know-how, but also the role of attention and the highly integrated types of control that allow agents to act together. (shrink)

Dichotomous thinking about mental phenomena is abundant in philosophy. One particularly tenacious dichotomy is between “automatic” and “controlled” processes. In this characterization automatic and unintelligent go hand in hand, as do non-automatic and intelligent. Accounts of skillful action have problematized this dichotomous conceptualization and moved towards a more nuanced understanding of human agency. This binary thinking is, however, still abundant in the philosophy of joint action. Habits and skills allow us agentic ways of guiding complex action routines that would otherwise (...) overwhelm our reflective capacities. In this paper, I look at how theories of skill, habit, and know-how in individual action can inform a non-dichotomous account of joint action. I argue that a fuller understanding of joint agency has to understand not only group know-how, but also the role of attention and the highly integrated types of control that allow agents to act together. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Social practices are a key concept in Raimo Tuomela’s work on sociality, they help us understand many aspects of sociality, including customs, traditions, and institutions. The key elements in his analysis of social practices are we-attitudes and pattern-governed behaviors. I am sympathetic to Tuomela’s approach to sociality to the extent that it recognizes and spells out many sufficient and necessary conditions for different types of social activity that together make up sociality. I agree with him that the complexity and multiplicity (...) of human agency, both when acting individually as well as when acting collectively or cooperatively, indeed calls for such an analysis with multiple sufficiency conditions. I especially appreciate his acknowledgement of the role of habits, customs, and the like for sociality. His three most recent books all pay attention to this aspect of human being. In this paper, I will zoom in on this aspect of Tuomela’s work and look at how he integrates habits, customs, and skills. In Tuomela’s words, I will zoom in on pattern-governed behaviors and social practices. On the one hand he gives them an important role and mentions customs often, as the “collective counterpart of habits” (Tuomela, Raimo. The Philosophy of Social Practices: A Collective Acceptance View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511487446, 2002, p. 121). At the same time, the analysis of habits and customs left me wanting. I will argue that they are too strongly dependent on and are integrated in a context in which we-attitudes are the key explanatory element. (shrink)

Angiogenesis is central to both the growth and metastasis of solid tumours. Anti‐angiogenic strategies result in blood vessel regression accompanied by tumour cell apoptosis. Radiotherapy and many chemotherapeutic agents kill tumours by inducing apoptotic cell death. We propose that, in addition to its role as an angiogenic factor, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) can act as a survival factor for tumour cells protecting them from apoptosis. Thus anti‐angiogenics, in particular those directed against VEGF, have multiple anti‐tumour effects. We suggest that (...) anti‐VEGF strategies prevent vessel growth and block a tumour cell survival factor, VEGF, rendering tumour cells more sensitive to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In addition, as chemotherapy and radiotherapy have been shown to increase VEGF expression, anti‐VEGF strategies may overcome therapy‐ induced tumour cell resistance. BioEssays 24:280–283, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.; DOI 10.1002/bies.10043. (shrink)

The work under consideration addresses a fundamental problem in cognitive neuroscience and social science. Although both aim to explain and understand human action, their explanatory tools are so divergent that our theories are riddled with conceptual gaps. Both fields are moreover permeated by old-fashioned action theory and folk psychology, which explain and understand action in terms of mind-reading and attributing beliefs, desires, and intentions to others. While these theories may work pragmatically in navigating our social world, they are increasingly questioned (...) as a basis for our theorizing. These and other problems within both disciplines have long held back a much-needed multidisciplinary approach to human action from gaining traction. Turner’s book aims to set it free. In this review I assess the book based on the key argumentative steps in Turner’s analysis, rather than providing a chapter-by-chapter overview. (shrink)

Carruthers rejects developmental evidence based primarily on an argument regarding one skill in particular: understanding false beliefs. We propose that this rejection is premature; and that identifying and examining the development of other subcomponent skills important for metacognition and mindreading, such as the ability to assess levels of knowledge, will in fact be useful in resolving this debate.

Dieser Beitrag nimmt als Ausganspunkt die gegenwärtige kontroverse Debatte um den adäquaten Erklärungsansatz in der Kognitionswissenschaft, und zwar zwischen Enaktivisten einerseits und Repräsentationalisten andererseits. Beispielhaft wurde aufgezeigt, dass in Bezug auf die soziale Kognition der enaktivistische Ansatz eine Voraussetzung machen muss, die er mit seinen eigenen Mitteln nicht einzufangen in der Lage ist. Denn der Versuch, das Verstehen des Anderen durch gemeinsame Sinnstiftung der Akteure innerhalb ihrer sozialen Interaktion zu erklären, gerät in einen Zirkel, da nicht erklärt wird, wie die (...) Kopplung und damit der Prozess der sozialen Interaktion allererst zustande kommen kann. Als Lösung dieses Problems wird eine repräsentationalistische Analyse der vorausgesetzten Fähigkeit, andere als potentielle Kooperationspartner anzusehen, entwickelt, und zwar mit den Mitteln von Millikans Teleosemantik. Diese Theorie aus dem Kontext der Debatte um die Naturalisierung mentaler Repräsentationen liefert mit den PP Repräsentationen den adäquaten Begriff, um sowohl verkörperte, handlungsorientierte Repräsentationen zur Analyse von Affordanzen, als auch verkörperte interaktionsorientierte Repräsentationen zur Analyse sozialer Affordanzen zu entwickeln. Dies erlaubt die Annahme einer zentralen Funktion für die soziale Wahrnehmung, die den blinden Fleck des enaktivistischen Ansatzes ausfüllen kann. Zugleich demonstriert diese Analyse der sozialen Wahrnehmung die explanatorische Überlegenheit (minimal) repräsentationalistischer Erklärungen gegenüber rein enaktivistischen Alternativen. (shrink)

Clark and Fischer argue that people see social robots as depictions of social agents. However, people's interactions with virtual assistants may change their beliefs about social robots. Children and adults with exposure to virtual assistants may view social robots not as depictions of social agents, but as social agents belonging to a unique ontological category.

This article sheds new light on late-19th-century debates about the organization of knowledge through its emphasis on German orientalism and comparative linguistics. Centering on Friedrich Carl Andreas’ controversial reconstruction of the Avestan language and its sacred literary corpus, I highlight a shift from the history of texts to an engagement with ‘living’ language in the decades around 1900. Andreas is shown to have inherited aspects of two schools, which collectively defined the landscape of 19th-century philological research – one traditional and (...) the other comparative. The long-standing struggle between these schools demonstrates that ‘the humanities’ were no monolithic foil to the rise of natural sciences during the second half of the 19th century. Instead, I argue that alternative conceptual frameworks were cultivated within German philology – concepts that were taken up in broader disciplinary debates, though they were not narrowly the products of them. (shrink)

This article attends to “questionnaires” in linguistic fieldwork defined by the inclusion of sensory stimuli. It shows that such non-verbal protocols have been used to help elucidate and compare semantic content, which has generally been subordinated to formal analysis in the history of linguistics. To explain and exemplify this relationship, I target the color questionnaire developed by Hugo Magnus, which included ten standardized color chips and a long list of interview questions on language use. Magnus’s questionnaire (Fragebogen) decoupled perception and (...) denotation in its day, though similar protocols have recently been employed to restore the connection between meaning and form. (shrink)

This paper examines the controversy that followed the 1987 publication of Joseph Greenberg's book, Language in the Americas, attending to the role of language and linguistic research within overlapping disciplinary traditions. With this text, Greenberg presented a macro‐level tripartite classification that opposed then dominant fine‐grained analyses recognizing anywhere from 150 to 200 distinct language families. His proposal was the subject of a landmark conference, examining strengths and weaknesses, the unpublished proceedings of which are presented here for the first time. For (...) specialists in the anthropological and comparative‐historical study of Indigenous American languages, Greenberg's intervention highlighted the tension between language, conceived as an abstract object of study, and languages, understood to be carriers of specific cultural knowledge. For physical anthropologists and archaeologists, his theory was initially fortuitous on programmatic, substantive, and methodological grounds. The essay will show how interdisciplinary appeals were figured by supporters as a virtue, and by critics as a vice. The essay further highlights ethical reasons for integrating historical narratives of science and the humanities. (shrink)

Described as a ‘sort of Human Genome Project for historical linguistics’, the Evolution of Human Languages Project (EHL) is dedicated to promoting long-range genealogical research into linguistic prehistory. Toward that end, its architects have sought to collect and coordinate evidence of every known human language, roughly 6000 in all, fostering an interdisciplinary and internationally accessible environment for the study of historical universals and contemporary diversity. This article investigates the roots and branches of the Global Lexicostatistical Database – a component project (...) of the EHL. It pays special attention to strategies for encoding epistemological pluralism in a web-based archive of global proportions. (shrink)

A community's abilities to promote health and maximize its response to public health threats require fulfillment of one of the four elements of public health legal preparedness, the capacity to effectively coordinate law-based efforts across different governmental jurisdictions, as well as across multiple sectors and disciplines. Government jurisdictions can be viewed “vertically” in that response efforts may entail coordination in the application of laws across multiple levels, including local, state, tribal, and federal governments, and even with international organizations. Coordination of (...) legal responses to public health emergencies also may involve a horizontal dimension comprising numerous and diverse sectors, such as public health, public and private health care, emergency management, education, law enforcement, the judiciary, and the military.Although responses to many acute health threats can implicate multiple jurisdictions and sectors, the jurisdictional and sectoral dimensions of legal preparedness are complex and may vary substantially by the nature of a threat, its geographic and geopolitical extent, and the operational response demanded. (shrink)

A community's abilities to promote health and maximize its response to public health threats require fulfillment of one of the four elements of public health legal preparedness, the capacity to effectively coordinate law-based efforts across different governmental jurisdictions, as well as across multiple sectors and disciplines. Government jurisdictions can be viewed “vertically” in that response efforts may entail coordination in the application of laws across multiple levels, including local, state, tribal, and federal governments, and even with international organizations. Coordination of (...) legal responses to public health emergencies also may involve a horizontal dimension comprising numerous and diverse sectors, such as public health, public and private health care, emergency management, education, law enforcement, the judiciary, and the military.Although responses to many acute health threats can implicate multiple jurisdictions and sectors, the jurisdictional and sectoral dimensions of legal preparedness are complex and may vary substantially by the nature of a threat, its geographic and geopolitical extent, and the operational response demanded. (shrink)

Previous research in North America has supported the view that male involvement in committed, romantic relationships is associated with lower testosterone (T) levels. Here, we test the prediction that undergraduate men involved in committed, romantic relationships (paired) will have lower T levels than men not involved in such relationships (unpaired). Further, we also test whether these differences are more apparent in samples collected later, rather than earlier, in the day. For this study, 107 undergraduate men filled out a questionnaire and (...) collected one saliva sample (from which a subject’s T level was measured) at various times across the day. As in previous studies, men involved in committed, romantic relationships had lower salivary T levels, though only during later times of the day. Furthermore, additional analysis of the variation among unpaired subjects indicated that men without prior relationship experience had lower T levels than experienced men. Finally, while paired men as a group had lower T levels than unpaired men, those men at the earliest stage (less than six months) of a current relationship had higher T levels than unpaired men as well as men in longer-term relationships. These results suggest that variation in male testosterone levels may reflect differential behavioral allocation to mating effort. (shrink)

Outpatient services are increasingly recognised as an important component of health care provision and may be improved through the application of modern management techniques. We have performed a time and role audit of consultation and waiting times in two medical clinics using different queuing systems: namely, a serial processing clinic where patients wait in a single queue and a quasi-parallel processing clinic where patients are directed to the shortest queue to maintain clinic flow. Data collected were used to construct a (...) computer simulation of patient flows in clinic. Assessment of patient satisfaction in the clinic process was determined using a self-administered questionnaire. Mean waiting time was shorter in the quasi-parallel processing clinic: 26 (SD 17) minutes compared with 36(24) minutes in the serial processing clinic. In the serial processing clinic 61% of patients waited more than 30 minutes compared with 41% in the quasi-parallel processing clinic. In the serial processing clinic 8% of 142 patients surveyed complained of the time spent waiting. The computer simulation we produced was able to determine waiting times with different clinic structures. The simulation showed that reductions in waiting time up to 30% might be achieved by changing our serial processing clinic to a quasi-parallel processing one. Performance of medical outpatient clinics can be improved by examining and changing clinic management. Computer simulation of outpatient clinics offers a means of assessing the impact of such changes on waiting time in clinic and on waiting lists. (shrink)

Social technology can improve the quality of older adults' social lives and mitigate negative mental and physical health outcomes associated with loneliness, but it should be designed collaboratively with this population. In this paper, we used participatory design methods to investigate how robots might be used as social facilitators for middle-aged and older adults in both the US and Japan. We conducted PD workshops in the US and Japan because both countries are concerned about the social isolation of these older (...) adults due to their rapidly aging populations. We developed a novel approach to participatory design of future technologies that spends 2/3 of the PD session asking participants about their own life experiences as a foundation. This grounds the conversation in reality, creates rapport among the participants, and engages them in creative critical thinking. Then, we build upon this foundation, pose an abstract topic, and ask participants to brainstorm on the topic based on their previous discussion. In both countries, participants were eager to actively discuss design ideas for socially facilitative robots and imagine how they might improve their social lives. US participants suggested design ideas for telepresence robots, social distancing robots, and social skills artificial intelligence programs, while Japanese participants suggested ideas for pet robots, robots for sharing experiences, and easy-to-operate instructor robots. Comparing these two countries, we found that US participants saw robots as tools to help facilitate their social connections, while Japanese participants envisioned robots to function as surrogate companions for their parents and distract them from loneliness when they were unavailable. With this paper, we contribute to the literature in two main ways, presenting: A novel approach to participatory design of future technologies that grounds participants in their everyday experience, and Results of the study indicating how middle-aged and older adults from the US and Japan wanted technologies to improve their social lives. Although we conducted the workshops during the COVID-19 pandemic, many findings generalized to other situations related to social isolation, such as older adults living alone. (shrink)